


ivory and gold

by parhelions



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Blood and Injury, Fantasy, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parhelions/pseuds/parhelions
Summary: Before, Youngho had never given the god of spring much thought.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 177





	1. summer

The god was young, as Youngho was. He was beautiful, as all gods were—smooth skin, dark lashes, hair the color of lilacs. 

And he was sprawled unconscious on his doorstep, pomegranate seeds scattered and gleaming as garnets around him, on his parted lips, a flower tucked behind his ear.

"Is he in any danger?" he asked Doyoung, who knelt at his other side. 

"Bloodwise, no. He’s only been drugged with poppy wine. And—" A quiet intake of breath. "—the fruit." 

A sleeve peeled back revealed what he had been dreading: frantic lines dashing across skin, splitting like branches of a tree. They pulsed as he watched, one dancing pattern after another, in time with the god’s sluggish heartbeat.

"Here, grab his feet. Who knows how long Mark can keep them distracted." Youngho crumpled the mocking flower in his pocket. He shifted his head from the flagstones, careful to not let it loll too fast, and looped his arms under him.

Together, he and Doyoung carried the god of spring into his hall, away from the night smelling of smoke and brine. The pomegranate seeds spilled behind them, innocent little _plinks_ that belied the fact that, whether by trickery or force, Jaehyun had eaten from the underworld’s groves.

Below, his guards fanned across the palace grounds. Their shouts sliced through the twilight, hounds combing for whoever had left minutes before the guests were set to arrive. He didn’t have much hope; whoever had snuck past his defenses, stole a pomegranate, and deposited a kidnapped god would be long gone. If the crowd had found him instead, the harvest court would have heard within the hour. Its lord would accuse Youngho of stealing his son, then having the gall to flaunt it. Wars have started for less.

A headache gathered at the base of his skull. 

They laid him in a room on the top floor, where a bed was already outfitted with sheets and a mound of pillows.

Doyoung broke the silence first. "Who would do this? I mean, it’s _Jaehyun_."

Youngho sighed, tapping the bedframe. "I could think of a few names."

Doyoung shoved an ottoman over and took Jaehyun’s arm to feel his pulse once more, cursing under his breath. Feeling all kinds of useless, Youngho stepped back. 

Jaehyun wore leather breeches and a loose linen shirt, no waistcoat or cravat. Clothes for a casual outing. It was summer aboveground, Youngho knew. The solstice tonight meant most of the underworld had invited themselves to his halls for a drunken bout of revelry, a dip in the lake. 

And now.

He hesitated, then unlaced Jaehyun’s boots and set them at the foot of the bed. Across from him, Doyoung loosened the ties at his shirtfront.

Youngho met his eyes. "Still stable?"

Doyoung gnawed on his lip. "I don’t know. The wounds are shallow enough. We’ll have to wait for Kun to see how his ichor is. I’m guessing you’ve..."

"I’ve already sent for him."

"Good."

"Now, to alert the whole realm or not." Youngho dug the tip of his boot into the rug, cobbling his thoughts together. The night had taken a sharp plummet, twists and turns abound. "As if anyone would think first, charge later, in the name of the prince of spring."

Doyoung gave a noise of protest, coming to stand beside him at the window. Torchlight flashed between the cypress. More carriages, more prying eyes. "The sea queen will listen, you know. She’ll have the truth. And there’s Dejun and Sooyoung—and me." He raised a brow, daring Youngho to contradict him.

A knock sounded on the door. The messenger drew back her hood and bowed. "Lord Kun has gotten your note and is on his way."

Youngho nodded his thanks. His headache was multiplying by the minute. The partygoers would have to relocate elsewhere tonight, disappointment or no. He would say the palace had been breached, or something. Not a lie. Then Ten and Yukhei could float the tureens and harps two rivers down to Ten’s manor, and _his_ scullery could take of the cleanup. No one would mind, sloshed in their cups.

He peeled himself away from the window, rolling up his sleeves. In his study there would be parchment. Flat dull pages of parchment, an inkstick, an inkstone, a seal stamp. Ordinary sights.

*

This far down, dawn came in splinters, light crawling up the edges of the land rather than poured from a star above. The palace creaked awake. If he focused enough, he could sense the swish of courtiers' feet on marble, the rasp of laundry and fish baskets over tile. The reapers’ boots tugged off in the vestibule to not track mud indoors, heels clapping the floor. A scrape of scales on—he cracked open one eye—the bannister. _Shit._

He threw off the blanket draped over his shoulders, wincing at the crick in his neck from sleeping at his desk. Doyoung’s work, probably, the blanket. The other god must have left to wrangle the sun or whisper to his oracles on the surface. 

Down the hall, Jaehyun slumbered on. More color had returned to his cheeks. He curled into himself, a strip of torso peeking out. The branching ink was absent from his skin.

Youngho studied the room, shook the curtains, checked inside the lampshades. Besides a pitcher of water and a bunch of peonies (gifted by Ten and charmed by Kun, to stave off the withering) the side table laid bare. There had been nothing else to do but let Jaehyun sleep off the wine and hope Youngho’s messages reached the right ears in time. Whether his words would soothe or inflame tempers was questionable. 

After that first night, he had switched up his guard rotations, doubled the watches on the groves, and planted eyes in the noble houses. Nothing, save for a few fallen nymphs, Jaehyun’s companions, who Doyoung stitched up and helped back to the surface.

A sheet rustled. Jaehyun stirred.

"Jason, _no_ ," Youngho hissed.

The snake spared a beady eye in Youngho’s direction. Already midway down a bedpost, it continued to slink toward Jaehyun’s slumbering form, tongue tasting the air, the strangeness of the newcomer before it. 

Youngho stopped it with a firm palm on its snout. "No. He’s a friend, a _guest_ ," he emphasized to the petulant expression clouding its face. "Go find Fred. Tell the boats to take you two up to sunbathe today, alright?"

The snake acquiesced, butting its coppery head into his hand for good measure. Youngho watched it sidle back up to the ceiling, squeezing into a gap in the molding.

He turned back, and Jaehyun was sitting up and staring at him. 

"You—" Youngho stopped himself, his usual confidence guttering away.

For the first time, he saw the heavy drapes, the midnight sheets of silk, the obsidian reliefs of beasts and ghouls cavorting around them. Not to mention a python with the girth of a pine bough vanishing into the ceiling.

"You’re in the underworld, but you’re safe," Youngho said, channeling his regal calmness, hoping that Jaehyun wasn’t panicking too badly. He would be, if he woke in a bed of roses. "You’ve been here for three days."

Jaehyun’s face betrayed a flash of emotion, bird-quick, before folding back into impassivity. "Then I apologize for imposing on you, Your Highness." His voice was low, hoarse with disuse. He dropped his gaze to his palms. The way he must have been taught, raised in a divine court, though no less jarring. The kingdom of death stood on par with the sea and sky, and Youngho had grown too comfortable in his small circle of friends. "Can I ask how I arrived here?"

"Hey, none of that," Youngho said, waving aside the formalities. "You’re the one who has been done wrong. I’ve only found you knocked out." He wished Kun or Doyoung or Mark and his honking jokes were here. Regardless, Jaehyun relaxed minutely against the pillows.

Youngho poured him a cup of water, which Jaehyun took with a wary thanks. "It’s been warded," he said, pointing at the pitcher. "But cast your own charms, to make sure."

Jaehyun nodded. When he whispered the incantations, though, gripping the cup with both hands, he winced. He tried again, a line forming between his brows. "I—the magic isn’t reaching me." He reached toward Ten's peonies. Youngho had seen him raise entire gardens, those rare occasions they were both on the Mountain. These stems didn’t so much as quiver. "Something’s missing."

"It’s not Kun’s work, is it? He did cast a charm on them."

"No, I can sense that layer. I just...can’t draw up my own." He retracted his arm. 

"Does it hurt?"

Jaehyun shook his head. "There’s only an absence. It—the magic’s never eluded me like this before. Even before I was brought to court."

Youngho sucked in a breath. The scent of cinnamon lingered in the room. Kun had arrived out of breath that first night, hands dyed a garish lime green from an experiment he'd been preparing for the solstice. A scrubbing in the washbasin, candles snuffed out, and he had thrown back Jaehyun’s blanket to inspect the state of ichor beneath.

 _The poison wasn’t made properly,_ he’d muttered, and Doyoung sprang up in alarm.

Youngho had opened his mouth to ask, but Kun left no room for it. He whirled to his bag and uncorked a jar, dusting Jaehyun with its contents—cloves, cinnamon, brown sugar, from the aromas that wafted up—and the room churned thick with his spellwork. Doyoung stood beside him, siphoning corruption that Kun drew from Jaehyun’s veins into a waiting clay crucible. 

Youngho had watched, chest tight, lighting and blowing candles out at their orders. Jaehyun remained limp under their ministrations. 

_They’re better at sneaking than casting,_ Doyoung noted, scowling at the bowl of oily corruption when they’d finished.

 _Especially_ —Kun bit this out before he’d fallen asleep on Doyoung’s shoulder to rest, anger nipping at his tone to the last— _fiddling with magic they had no business in._

Now, Jaehyun held his hands to the narrow window, brows creased. He absently touched his temple. "I’ve eaten the seeds."

Youngho suppressed a flinch. _Just like that._ "You remember?"

A slow nod. "They told me a god would die, made to rot, if I didn’t eat the dishes they brought out. They said they had captured him and was debating on sparing his life and kingdom."

"Who?" 

"You," Jaehyun said evenly. 

"That’s impossible." 

"I know that now," Jaehyun said. "But back then, the rooms were stuffy. And hot. I couldn’t see anything, not even myself."

Dehydrated, caught, held in a dim place, most likely in a moving prison crumbled by now. Flesh was flesh, and theirs—the young gods’—had not cooled yet; food, drink, and sleep, when denied, made them unravel, eventually. The elder ones were fond of reminding them of this.

Youngho’s fingers itched. He wanted to reach out, touch Jaehyun’s shoulder, the back of his pale hand, but shoved the feeling down. No need to make him more uneasy than he already was. He weighed his words. "Those that imprisoned you—they wore disguises, I’m guessing."

"Veils, yes. When they led me to the table to eat." Jaehyun looked away. His mouth flattened. "My father—is he alright?"

For a split second, Youngho considered lying, but Jaehyun would know better than most. As soon as Mark had delivered the news, the harvest god had demanded a small legion to be allowed passage down and extract his son back to the surface, despite Doyoung’s accompanying letter about his delicate state—along with ten casks of the underworld’s sapphires and Youngho in Mountain-forged chains.

"He’s furious, to say the least."

A phantom twitch of his lips. "Ah." 

"Since you’re awake, they—your father, the high king and queen, the other gods—will want to hear your story," Youngho said.

"I guess they have to make sure their investment isn’t harmed." The same measured, almost careless, tone. He turned back, gaze a touch more lucid. "You set the meeting place to be down here, right? In your own realm."

The corners of Youngho’s mouth lifted. To his chagrin, he had assumed Jaehyun stuck to his tulips and topiaries and shunned the gods’ thorny politics. Not that he would blame him. "Of course. There will likely be a crowd, but I can tell them to not be let through."

Jaehyun shook his head. "Better for as many ears as possible to hear the truth from the source." He twisted a hand in the bedsheets. "Someone badly wanted the harvest court pitted against you, or to create a diversion. I’m sorry."

"None of it is your fault," Youngho asserted. He stood up, joints plaintive, aware of how worn he was from the lack of sleep. "I’ll send for Kun and make arrangements."

At the lakeshore, he felt a messenger’s footfall on the soil, brushing the edge of his wards. Acceptances to his invites rather than declarations of battle, he hoped. He took a step out of the room, then paused, looking back. 

The bed was coated in spices and sugar to root out the last of the poppy wine. Jaehyun sat in his unchanged clothes and unwashed skin. 

"Before they’re invited," Youngho said. "Would you like a bath?"

Jaehyun laughed behind his hand. "Yes, please." His eyes crinkled.

 _Pretty,_ a sliver of Youngho thought, a bolt from the blue. _He’s pretty._

*

His throne room sat in a chilled hush, glazed yellow under the candelabras. Gods and goddesses leaned toward Jaehyun’s words. A week-long scouting trip had gone wrong on the way back.

He had not heard Jaehyun’s recollection either. Over the past few days, Youngho had showed him the judgment courts on the north side, letting him wander the glass-domed garden that was really a single kind of flower and many rocks and read while Youngho kept guard and put up a desk to do clerical work, giving him a wide berth. He did not press him to speak.

This afternoon, Youngho had seated him at the head of the long table, to which Jaehyun accepted with a trace of reluctance. As the clock struck three, they settled into their chairs, and the rest of the immortals—curious nereids, bearded satyrs, flocks of sirens, helper gods—filed into the mezzanine above.

He sat on Jaehyun’s left, the harvest god on his right. Jaehyun’s father kept a white-knuckled grip on the hilt of his sword, darting looks of fury between Youngho and the room at large. Beside him, Minji, smelling of seawater, arched a delicate brow: _should I or should you?_

 _Neither,_ he hoped his grimace conveyed. The audience was eager for a brawl, verbal or otherwise. 

"By then there were warriors in light armor, flying no colors," Jaehyun was saying, eyes trained the table. "Most of them were armed with muskets." 

"Bourbons?" asked Somin.

"Or the Qing. The list goes on," said the king of the gods. He peered at Youngho over the rim of his glass. It must have rankled him, not having his customary seat at the head of table. But this was Youngho’s palace, Youngho’s rules. "Though a mercenary ghost army of any fierce warrior may be...desirable, to some."

A ripple through the crowd. Youngho exhaled, then pitched his voice above the din, "Desirable, but sadly imaginary, sky lord. Were these weapons in the physical form?" he directed at Jaehyun. 

"They were." Jaehyun pushed back his fringe to show the scabbing cuts. Any of the strikes could have killed a mortal man.

"A weapon made of shadow couldn’t have done this," Youngho said, and the tittering quieted.

"Hellfires, don’t insinuate without _proof_ , dear husband," the high king’s wife, goddess of marriage, sniped. "It makes you look rather foolish."

"And I suppose you think _you’re_ the epitome of intelligence, hm?"

"Don’t put words in my mouth."

"Like you put other men’s—"

"Continue, please, god of spring," Minji's cool voice cut through the argument.

Youngho sighed to himself. He glanced sidelong at Doyoung; he and his sister Sooyoung wore identical world-weary expressions. Somin, blonde today, was unreadable as ever. Dejun fiddled with the stem of his glass, rings flashing. Sorn was absent, but that was unsurprising; she lost track of the seasons in her forge.

Jaehyun cleared his throat. "We fought back. They had the advantage of numbers—by fivefold, perhaps, but they were mortals from the way they bled. And the nymphs and sirens with me were skilled." The harvest god croaked a soft agreement. "It was only a matter of time before we forced a surrender, or slaughtered them." He paused. "Then the ground split."

" _Split?_ As in, nothing below?" the high king asked. 

Jaw set, Jaehyun nodded. "A rift opened up and I could hear the river below. Or rivers."

The whispers erupted again; Youngho could feel the prickle of eyes on him. A rift deep enough to hear the Acheron, or the Styx. A handful of titans could attempt it, once, but they were no longer. Youngho himself needed the royal sceptre, which had been missing for centuries. 

Beside him, Doyoung nudged his boot, a reassurance.

"So the truth comes out, regardless," the harvest god declared. 

Jaehyun protested, the first hint of emotion filtering into his tone, "Father, you haven’t _listened_ —"

The harvest god’s voice was hard. "Be silent, child, I’m trying to keep you safe. You can’t trust these unrepentant liars."

"And what say you, Youngho?" Minji's murky gaze betrayed nothing. 

"I cannot do such a thing. I would need either the sceptre, which has been lost before my ascendency, or large stores of energy, which would have been felt." He looked down the table, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Flinty. Grave. Anxious. "Such an amount of magic would have shown in my body or my home. I can still stand, as you’ve all seen, and you are welcome to search my halls for fractures."

Silence met his words. They shifted in their seats. Sipped, contemplative, from their goblets. 

Then the goddess of war leaned forward, an innocuous gleam to her eye. "Convenient, for such an instrument to be missing."

He gave her a cursory nod. Maybe his predecessor should have searched harder for the sceptre. No, scratch that: _he_ should have searched harder for the sceptre. "I’m well aware."

The harvest god opened his mouth, no doubt to tell them what _he_ thought of that, but the high king waved an impatient hand, gesturing at Jaehyun to begin again. 

"I stopped short of falling in," Jaehyun said. "But something pulled me in. I never struck the ground. I was caught in a net, along with several of the nymphs who tried to hold on. It was impossible to break free of. The next thing I knew, I was alone in a cell."

At last, he recounted his captors and the seeds, the delirium, the threats.

The shock spread plain over their faces. Little was known about the fruits of the underworld (the pomegranate, the persimmons, the bitter orange), only that no one remembered planting them, that they were necessary in ambrosia, and that they should not be eaten raw. Scraps of wisdom, passed from primeval times.

"You can fix it, surely?" the harvest god asked, too nervous for anger at this point. Despite the god’s hard-headed bias against him, Youngho could sympathize. Jaehyun was his son, after all. 

The high king swallowed. Clapping his hands together, he pushed to his feet, stroking his goatee. "Of course. He will be right as rain, once he’s back with you." The high queen, having seemingly forgotten their argument before, extended the sentiments, starched smile on her face.

Across the table, Minji met Youngho’s eyes again. Dubious, this time. Youngho shrugged. From certain angles, the high king's crown seemed overlarge for his head.

"This net that can trap one of the blood of the Mountain—most disturbing indeed. Sea Queen, are you able to investigate?" 

"Of course," Minji replied smoothly. 

"And these nymphs—we should speak to them, see if they remember anything else. Where are they now?" 

"My people have healed them, and they are recovering in my manor," Doyoung spoke up. "Including the ones that have fallen down here."

"Excellent," the high king rumbled. A sly slant took to his mouth. "Yours is with them, I suppose? Hard to forget a face like _that_."

Doyoung kept his placid mask in place, but Youngho sensed a fury stretched taut beneath. _His?_ With the way the queen of the gods glowered, he suspected more of the king’s wandering eyes.

"And if any of these weapons can be recovered...Lady Sooyoung, could these be sent to you for scrutiny?"

The goddess of the hunt nodded.

"And what’s to stop the perpetrators from destroying the evidence?" the god of the harvest asked, leaping to his feet. "Or their allies from doing shoddy work on purpose?"

"Do your own investigation, then. You have my blessing. King Youngho has graciously opened up his palace to you," the sky god replied, patently done with the whole business. He sniffed, straightened the cuff of his sleeve. The queen took his elbow. "Minhyung."

At the end of the table, Mark, plastering on his _don’t-shoot-the-messenger_ face to his uncle, straightened. "My lord?"

"Make sure this gets across all the realms: everyone should cooperate fully in finding whoever harmed the god of spring. Anyone who knows something should step forward now, or face the tribunal later."

Mark bowed, capped his inkwell, and rolled up the scroll. 

Chairs scraped back. The high gods downed the dredges of their wine and prepared to return to the surface. Some of them paused to thank Youngho for hosting, inquiring after his realm’s health. Others ignored him, skirting his attention to slip out the tall bronze doors with the crowd. 

"Goodbye, then."

Startled, he turned around. Like a fragment of a dream, Jaehyun stood before him, clad in one of Youngho’s old traveling cloaks. He was tall, Youngho realized. Taller than Doyoung. Shorter than him.

"You believe me, then?" After that debacle of a meeting, he wasn’t sure _he_ could be certain of anyone. 

Jaehyun looked up at him. The studied blankness from before had given way to a searching gaze. 

"You only do your duty," he said simply. 

Youngho wondered if a hug or a vow of fire-and-brimstone vengeance was more appropriate.

Jaehyun was all but yanked away by his father. He flashed Youngho a small, resigned smile, furrows in his cheeks, then faded back to the bearing of a sculpture. His old clothes were still up in his room, along with his earrings, but the harvest god strode on as if he would leave an entire legion behind if it meant they would leave a minute earlier.

A inexplicable wisp of sadness rose up. They would not see each other for a while. Never, if the god of the harvest stormed out as he did. From the little that he’d glimpsed, he would had liked to get to know Jaehyun better, beneath that polished enamel of good manners.

Youngho smiled, waved back, and turned away to shake someone else’s hand. 

"Don’t forget your peonies, you ungrateful ass!" Ten hollered from the mezzanine above, resulting in a hundred heads swiveled up in his direction. He squinted. Kun was beside him, head in his hands. Jaehyun wrenched out of his father’s grasp, lips moving, climbing back up the steps, if only for the minute it would take to go up and collect his things. Before that moment, Youngho had never been more grateful for the brashness of the god of dreams. 

*

An evening of quiet stretched before him. Bleary-eyed, he shut the book he was reading, a thin tome from the Hanlin Academy Sicheng had duplicated in spelled squid-ink for him, and sank into his vast bed, drawing the duvet up to his chin. 

Splitting his consciousness took a toll. It was far better to sleep before letting himself scatter. He fell up through layers of magma and bedrock to the earth’s surface, unmoored from his kingdom below. 

A peasant woman on the birthing bed. A pair of soldiers lost to a shimmering desert heat. An aristocrat on a torn palanquin, wails around him. 

For each, he coaxed them from the blood and salt of the living, down to a waiting boat. Some fought, kicked tooth and nail. Others could see him, in their final moments, opening their arms in limp relief. Whenever the Fates snipped a thread, the underworld was there to collect. 

His predecessor had warned him of the weariness of it, the tedium to pruning the cycle of life. Donning the mantle, passed down, morphing to become what each mortal needed. For them he was Youngho but also John, at another shore; he was the Ghost King, the Frost King, the Grim Reaper, the Shinigami. An angel, a demon. A light at the end of a tunnel.

The list had run long in the recent days. Some bodies had rotted, or been cremated, their ghosts wandered off to the burnt shell of a childhood lot, a favorite street. The bottom of the Atlantic for a doomed fleet of ships, one of his reapers had circled in red. Youngho found them without fail. 

He had won the games amongst the gods of the underworld. Sleep, Violence, Night. Each house had sent their toddling offspring to vie for the throne. After the silver and onyx crown rested upon Youngho’s head, the previous king of the dead ushered them to the Lethe, where they drank to cleanse themselves of the trials. Gone, for a neutral bending of knees.

He would be steeped in godhood.

Although he and his peers forgot, their relatives may not have. Shrouded in mist, the ancient grove burst with growth. He did not know how deep the roots went, how the gnarled trees thrived. Fruit and blossom swelled under the starlight, branches shooting over the fence. Plenty of places to hide or run after filching a pomegranate or two.

*

His steward shook him from rest in the limbo of his room. 

"My king, there is trouble at the mouth of the Styx," he said once Youngho sat up, whole again. His head was throbbing anew, hovering at the brink of nausea. 

"What is it?" 

"The god of spring cannot pass through. The head ferryman is already there..."

"But?" Youngho prompted him.

"There’s something odd. About the pomegranate’s magic, or the exiting itself, the messenger could not say."

Fighting the wave of vertigo, he dove into his wardrobe, throwing on the first shirt and pair of trousers he saw. "Just him? Not the god of harvest?"

"Just him," his steward affirmed, nervously rocking back and forth on his heels. "He thinks it is a trick of yours."

Youngho fastened his belt and cinched on his sword. He hoped he would not need it. "Of course he does. Is the sky god not with them?"

"He has been attempting to, ah, break the fruit’s hold on the god of spring for this past hour. It has been reported he has had no visible success." His steward followed him down the stairs, puffing. Youngho would normally slow down and shorten his strides for him, but a lump lodged in the pit of his stomach, burning cold while his head remained doused in flames. Jaehyun was still in the underworld. 

"The horses are being saddled, if you prefer your chariot."

Youngho shook his head. "If they’re on the river, going by boat would be faster."

Guards lined his hall as he rounded the corner into the vestibule. He grabbed a pair of boots and motioned his steward to hang back, running barefoot into the night. 

He knew the path to the lake by heart. The flagstones tore his feet; the leaf litter pooled damp at his ankles. He pushed his magic before him, and the gates to the docks clanged open.

Someone was sitting in his boat.

"Mark," he called. "What—"

"Who do you think delivered the message so quickly?" Mark asked. He reached out a hand to help Youngho step in, their knees bumping together. Youngho gave the canoe nudge of intent, and it lurched into motion. "My uncle - I mean, the _high king_ would still be stalling, if I didn’t ‘accidentally’ come down with the same symptoms Jaehyun had." Mark rolled his eyes. "For once, he believes it’s contagious."

"Symptoms?" The spirit of the lake roused awake; the canoe picked up speed. Youngho wiggled into his boots.

"His head was killing him. And his feet—he could barely walk. Doyoung came back there too, trying to keep everyone from losing their shit. He said some markings were back?"

Those arcane symbols on Jaehyun’s skin, vibrantly red as the seeds. "We saw those on him that first night, but they’d disappeared." He massaged his head, wracking his thoughts for a song, a memory, anything about the groves that he’d inherited. There were fanciful stitchings of the branching pattern in tapestries, depictions of trespassers given in to gluttony. None had concrete detail on the affliction or its effects.

"Wait." Mark’s face swam before him. The lantern rattled from its post, a lone halo in the dense dark. "Youngho, is _your_ head killing you, too?"

"Yes, I’ve just been—" He stopped, latching onto what Mark was implying. "You think?"

"I don’t know. If the groves are rooted to the land, and since _you_ are the land, or the land is you, or whatever—and if Jaehyun is trying to leave it..."

"Could it be like this?"

"Who knows? The Fates play with us as well." 

They tumbled down a gorge in their path, the lantern whipping wild. The Styx roared, whisking them along at a breakneck pace. Each riverbank was a pebbly blur. Youngho touched his fingertips to the bubbling surface of the water, conveying his thanks to the deity there. A pearl, he would remind himself to toss in later. A handful of gold.

"If everyone knew that a journey that takes hours could be condensed into minutes, I'll soon be out of work," Mark mumbled, pressed flat to the bottom of the boat.

"Luckily for you, this service is only for the god of death," Youngho said, gritting his teeth against every bump of the boat. Mark reached out to pat his shin. "Perks of the job."

As they neared the fork that led to the surface, his headache receded, little by little. He mulled over the simplicity of Mark’s logic: Jaehyun could very well be sealed down here by some tie to his land. Someone had purposefully fed him the fruit. _But why? Who gains?_ Better to attack a more notorious god, one of war or wisdom, for power. Or the sea, for guaranteed anger. The high king, despite his blustering, understood the old groves no better than any of them. 

_Someone badly wanted the harvest court pitted against you. Or to create a diversion._

He moored the boat up to the maw of the underworld. Here the river slowed, widening through a grotto before splitting into the Styx’s outermost loop, a necklace encircling his realm. Rocks and pillars, crusted with lichen, stood tall and silver in the moonlight.

Closer, the silhouettes morphed. Doyoung was conversing in flat tones with the god of harvest, who had to crane his head to meet his gaze. To the side, the ferryman hovered, wide-eyed, clutching his bone staff.

Brain sticking to his skull, Youngho stepped out, boots finding purchase on a wet boulder. 

"—there’s no antidote because that would imply _poison_ , which there’s none of in his system."

"—vengeance, I tell you! That foolhardy messenger turned his back as the high king was speaking—" 

"—because _someone_ needed to. No, doing the same thing again and expecting the same result is idiotic—"

"—surely the king of the gods would understand better than a _sewer rat_ , barely grown!" 

"And the sewer rat is here," said Youngho, walking up behind him. 

The harvest god jumped back. "You dare show your face, after inflicting my son with your wickedness?"

Youngho stared at him, too exhausted to bother hiding his contempt. "Where is he?"

A flurry of attendants parted, revealing a figure curled on a patch of moss, light hair stark against the shadows.

Jaehyun.

His veins ran cold. With careful steps, he crossed the space between them, faintly aware of the harvest god sputtering in the background, Doyoung and Mark hushing his protests. 

When Youngho crouched next to him, Jaehyun’s eyes slitted open. A film of sweat shone on his brow. This close, the effect was unmistakable: Youngho’s headache, already fading since he’d gotten on this outbound branch of the river, broke to a wave of relief. His limbs loosened, enough to catch himself from falling on top of him. The harvest god would gut him for that. 

"...Are you alright?"

"Are _you_?"

He held his breath as the beating lines on Jaehyun’s skin slowed, yet not quite stopping.

An impulse surged to his fingertips. The strange sadness from seeing his retreating back that afternoon rushed forth, along with the need to protect him, touch him, skin to skin.

He held out his hand. Jaehyun took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Once, someone who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: 'The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.'" — _The Picture of Dorian Gray_
> 
> [general notes](https://parhelias.tumblr.com/myth), [moodboard attempt](https://parhelias.tumblr.com/post/637628816778461184/ivory-and-gold-a-mythology-remix-hades). please feel free to point out any mistakes!


	2. late summer

The earth was silent beneath Jaehyun's feet.

For the first time in his life, he walked without knowing how the roots stretched beneath, how far the shale reached behind soil. He was aware of a gap now, yawning where it had been teeming with sensation. This was what it meant to be human, maybe. Seeing only with his eyes, feeling with his skin. 

He padded down the corridor, tamping back the old bite of panic. A lemur watched him with amethyst eyes. Alabaster dolphins leapt from volcanic-glass foam. A tree burst from a vase, branches coated in gold. Between them were vast stretches of marble, polished to a shine. A far cry from the harvest palace, in its filigree of vines and leaves, wisteria perfuming the rooms, sunlight smearing every rosewood table and chair.

Under this deep blue dusk, he missed the sky the most. The true one.

 _Spoiled prince,_ he could hear the courtiers saying. _Coddled dove._

"There you are." Taeyong appeared at the other end of the corridor, lantern in hand. 

"Sorry." Jaehyun blinked against the light. "Were you looking for me?"

"Kun is." In typical Taeyong behavior, his gaze was assessing, sharp. He was a nymph, a naiad from a lake, and had seen his fair share of the world gone belly-up. Jaehyun was grateful to have a familiar face with him. "If you feel up to being dissected again, I mean."

Jaehyun smiled. "Sure."

Hair near black in the shadows, Taeyong drew up to the display Jaehyun was squinting at: spheres of resin, each preserving a pristine water lily. "Huh, he really did keep these. I’m honored."

Jaehyun stopped short. "You're saying _you_ gave these to him?"

"Growth from my first season, actually," said Taeyong. They started down the hall to the central staircase. "One of my pearls found its way to a Kotagede princess, some fifty years after it went missing. When she died, Youngho found it around her neck and returned it to me."

"You never told me about that."

Taeyong gave him a faint smile. "Would you have believed me, back then?" 

Despite years after leaving the harvest court, Taeyong’s gentle ribbing was the same, pulling the screen from his eyes. Jaehyun cringed at the filial child he used to be, the firm belief that his father knew best. "Not really, no."

On the second floor, the door to the library stood ajar. Ten was sketching on a piece of paper, cheek pressed to the table. Kun mulled over a set of books. A third god hooked his chin over his shoulder.

"Ah, it’s Jaehyun." Ten set down his charcoal. "Yangyang, say hello."

The third god broke into a boyish grin. "Hi."

"One of Sooyoung’s hunters," Ten said, twirling the charcoal between his fingers. "She sent him down with one of her moonstones."

"The night you were attacked was nearly a full moon," Taeyong said. He kicked off his slippers and curled into an armchair next to the fireplace. "Kun wants to see if your curse is tied to it."

"Wouldn’t Taeil have felt it?" Jaehyun pulled out a chair beside Ten, noting how easily they draped themselves around the room. He was sure he was overstepping some invisible line in staying here, despite the god of death’s relaxed manners, his insistence that Jaehyun make himself at home.

Kun looked up. "He probably would have. But before this, I would have said Youngho should have felt someone trespassing on his realm, too, but..."

Nodding, Jaehyun settled into the chair. Kun scritched out notes while Ten ground ink for him, chatting as Kun listened. They were new lovers, on the immortal scale of things, but moved fluidly in each other’s spaces. A part of Jaehyun envied them, their quiet, uncomplicated affection.

The god of death— _Youngho_ , Jaehyun was getting used to calling in his thoughts—was asleep in his chambers, shepherding the newly dead. _His beauty rest,_ Ten had dubbed it, to which Youngho flicked croutons at him. A scene Jaehyun couldn’t have imagined, before. The tales told of a surly, lonesome god that ate hunks of flesh for dinner and seduced brides from their wedding days. _Whose_ flesh was left to the listeners’ imagination. 

A bump on his ankle. Below the table, a snake, looking caught out, peered up at him. 

Taeyong stood, preparing to intervene, but Jaehyun met its gaze. "Jason, right? Or—" He considered the butterscotch splotches. "—Fred?"

The python hissed a happy rasp, scales winking in the candlelight. It looped around the back of his chair. 

"He let you see his snakes?" Taeyong marveled, squatting over to get a better look.

Ten chortled. "Is that a euphemism?"

"Don’t corrupt my innocent ears," Yangyang groaned. 

"Another one was there when I woke up," Jaehyun said. Fred twisted himself around to bump noses with Taeyong. "The king - _Youngho_ behaved like he got loose on accident." 

"They’re supposed to protect the palace against intruders," Ten said, a quirk to his mouth. "The three-headed dog - dogs? - was loyal to the first death king. It followed him after he abdicated. Since then, everyone picked their own guards."

"Could they have seen anything?" In the haze of the recent weeks, Jaehyun had not thought of his first morning here, nor the panicked days that followed.

Taeyong shook his head. "Youngho already checked, that same night he found you."

"They _bit_ me the first time I came to court." Ten hoisted up a slim ankle, pointing, though no scar remained.

"Because you were snooping around without permission," said Kun.

"Everyone was." Ten pouted. "We’re a sneaky lot. We wanted to see what kind of person the new king was."

"I wasn’t."

Yangyang snorted. "Because you’re old as dust and _bor—ing—_ "

Ten failed to stifle his laughter. 

They squawked and clutched their ears as Kun sent out a push of magic, muttering if _he_ was old then _Ten_ was old and Yangyang was being corrupted by such base influences. Taeyong reclined in the backdrop, amused. 

Turning back to Jaehyun with a genial smile, Kun said, "I think I have what I need for the spell, if you’re ready?"

They cleared off the table for Jaehyun to lie flat on his back. Kun placed a stalk of thistle on Jaehyun’s sternum, shifting it until he was satisfied with its arrangement. Ten dipped a brush in a dish—"just olive oil," he whispered, winking—and dabbed his forehead, chin, and the center of his throat. Taeyong snuffed out the lamps, and Kun launched into a low song. 

Like the last time, the notes drew the dormant magic out. Jaehyun gritted his teeth against the waking heat, his head throbbing anew. Although Youngho was in the same palace, the distance stretched taut between them, threads of power flossed tight, a stranglehold through rib and tendon. Jaehyun hoped Youngho was fast asleep.

The cabochon in Yangyang’s hands blazed, bright as a moon, then faded. 

The marks on Jaehyun’s skin cooled. Kun continued to sing under his breath, holding one of Jaehyun’s hands between his own. Taeyong held the other, tracking his pulse. Neither the light nor heat returned. "Gods are immortal," his mother had scolded him once. He had fallen, and she patched him up. "But only if they aren’t killed first."

_Gods can kill other gods._

Kun wobbled on his feet.

"And it looked so close too," Ten murmured, slinging an arm around Kun’s waist.

Kun slit open one eye. "It wasn’t."

"Shh."

The lamps were relit, and Kun stood again. "Thank you," Jaehyun said, clasping his hands as to not wring them. 

Yangyang made a vague noise, enraptured by the moonstone. Kun shook his head, smiling. "I needed to satisfy my curiosity. You all right?"

Jaehyun nodded, looking down at his arms. They were bare. None of the lines left a scratch. 

"Did that help any?" Taeyong asked, standing as well. Fred must have gone back into the walls; the python was nowhere in sight.

"Like calls to like, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same," Kun said. He slid his books and notes into his knapsack, gaze far away. 

"Then, that _was_ a fluke," said Yangyang, frowning.

"It was probably the ancient energies bouncing off each other. The reaction stayed low after the first verse." Kun fiddled with the pack’s straps. "I - we’ll keep thinking."

Jaehyun and Taeyong saw them off at the front steps. The mist laid heavy on the marsh tonight, the carriage swallowed up before the first bend in the road. 

*

In his youth, Jaehyun lived with his mother. As the goddess of a forest, she had a small, neat shrine where the locals came to pray, leaving behind apples and plums, bunches of wildflowers. She gave Jaehyun the plums, grimacing at their tartness. He took them up to the trees to eat while he read and tossed down the seeds. 

Children came to the forest to play. They grew up, kissed under the pines, led their own children to frolick in the shade. Some saw him. The younger ones, who did not know fear, regaled him with stories about frying dough and stringing kites while he helped them navigate the brambles and gather blackberries. Sometimes they sought him out, tugging a parcel of friends along. Despite his mother’s warnings, Jaehyun went with them to fish at the pond, kick around a ball in an open field. After they grew up, a few returned to the forest, staring up at the trees, fighting to remember.

During the harshest winters he snuck into the village, leaving lumps of gold he’d uncovered on their kitchen stoops. Bean and bone, worm and quartz: pinpricks on his consciousness. He was old enough to keep this to himself.

One spring, he grew a plum tree overnight.

His father’s footsteps were as graceful as his mother’s. Blades of grass sprouted from his heels. Below, Jaehyun heard the bedrock loosen, breathe in the god’s presence. 

He perched from the treetops as his mother bowed and showed his father the plum tree, bathed with blossom where he had thrown a seed the day before. 

"Well done," his father said to her. 

She was silent. 

"You must understand, however, I am already married and..." They walked away, voices hushed. Jaehyun did not follow. 

*

"Coffee?" 

Youngho lifted up a steaming pewter pot. 

Jaehyun startled out of his reverie. "Yes, please."

It was early morning, judging by the orange limning the cliffs. The underworld’s sky changed in monotones, spokes of light slashing the horizon. Doyoung had said it used to be dark all the time, before Renjun brought a slice of dawn down here. Yuta made the clouds.

"Taeyong told me that last night was a failure again," Youngho said. He spooned sugar into his cup and stirred, exhaustion dogging his movements. He could sleep while he gathered souls, but Jaehyun wasn’t sure if he actually did, as of late.

"It was kind of a far-off theory, anyways. Kun wanted to rule something out." 

"Elimination of choices will leave you with the right answer eventually," Youngho offered, taking a long draught.

"Or a blank page," Jaehyun countered, irrationally pleased when he drew out a laugh from Youngho. The tip of his slipper tapped against his own. 

The kitchen table was a tiny thing, intended for one. Two people with long limbs meant a squeeze, but the view was sprawling and the proximity soothed him, whether it was the curse or Youngho’s anchoring presence.

"Has he checked the constellations on that night?" Youngho asked. 

"He did - but there was nothing unusual," Jaehyun said. "He tested them anyways, with some of the high queen's mirrors."

"The stars above or below?"

"Both."

"Damn."

Jaehyun hummed in agreement. The coffee radiated warmth from his belly.

A wind howled outside, rattling the panes. Youngho poured himself a second cup. One of the underworld judges wandered in, grumbling out pleasantries, and buttered a piece of toast. After she left, an iron poker floated in and stoked the fire. Cutting boards and sacks of vegetables hopped out of the pantry. 

"Those onions are massive," Jaehyun observed idly. The potatoes and carrots were oversized, too. A few could be dismissed as aberrants in a harvest, but these were all larger than life.

Youngho followed his gaze. "—Thanks."

"It wasn’t a compliment." He jerked back. He was talking to the god of death, not joking around with Donghyuck or Doyoung. "I mean—"

"You can say what’s on your mind," Youngho said, eyes shining with mirth. "I'm glad you can speak freely around me."

Jaehyun hid his mortification in gulps of coffee. At the harvest court, he knew how to massage another’s ego, look through his lashes in a way that had people melting over him. Subtle touches. With Youngho, he didn’t know how to act. The other god was direct, answering his questions openly, seeing to the truth without personal gain. It was baffling.

"Do they grow in the same place as the sacred fruits?" Jaehyun asked.

"No. Most of the underworld’s crops grow outside of Asphodel," Youngho said. "The groves do their own thing. No one tends to them."

Jaehyun digested this. He knew the underworld’s plants weren't really alive, in the standard sense, but took on the taste and texture of food. He smiled inwardly. "Watered with the agonized screams from Tartarus?" 

"Is that what they say about me?" Youngho said, laughing. _Again_.

"I thought it was a lie."

"You thought right. It’s a lot more boring than that. What else do they say about me?" 

Jaehyun took another sip, thinking. "You steal brides on their wedding days?" 

Youngho's amusement grew. "What use would I have for a bunch of brides? And no, don’t say it. Unlike some, I can keep it in my pants."

Jaehyun smiled into his cup. While the high queen and king’s mutual cheating was widely known, it was referred to with subtlety. "What grows the plants down here, if the sun doesn't reach?"

"The river," Youngho said. "The Lethe gets energy from memories and the soil absorbs it. The act of eating and harvesting helps the souls down here adjust, until it’s time for them to go back."

"Soft, some might say," Jaehyun said, testing the waters. "Or clever."

Youngho shrugged. "The dead become unruly when they remember they’re dead. I would be too."

Jaehyun nodded. He set down his cup. The sky had gone pearly, the dusting of stars fading in the glow. In his room, letters awaited. His father, begging him to gut Youngho at his first chance and run. His mother, sending pressed flowers that he hoarded in an envelope. Courtiers tailing his half-siblings, collecting gossip. A few felt bold enough to address him as _sweetling_ or _darling_ , each certain they were the only one Jaehyun turned to.

There were corridors Jaehyun hadn’t yet explored, musty scrolls to comb about the groves. Mortals burst into flame if they tasted a persimmon. Vengeful ghosts drowned them, with pomegranates. If cooked in the right proportions, the fruits made ambrosia. Some theorized that the heat of the hearth snapped any link to the underworld. Others said the other ingredients reacted with it.

Whatever it was, there was no mention about an immortal consuming it raw, and Jaehyun failed to find details on the luckless humans’ deaths. Much of the divine was mystery, heightened by legend. He was running out of books to search in. Already had, if he was being cynical.

"I’m heading out to the fields, actually." Youngho scraped his chair back to place their cups in the sink. "Do you want to come with me?"

Jaehyun looked up in surprise. His father’s voice crept in, urging him not to fraternize with the enemy, the unsavory residents of the underworld. He ignored it. "If it’s alright?"

"More than alright."

*

"Bastard offspring of Night, scarcely a century old and crowned," a god of grain sneered. 

"But _that_ Night is gone."

"An orphan, king in the triad?" 

Scandalized voices carried through the latticework. Around the corner, Jaehyun had held onto the tea tray, listening hard. His father’s court disliked many things. Orphans, who were said to eat like a swarm of locusts, topped the list near widows, whose rumored tears salted the barley fields.

He made his entrance, and they quieted. It would not do to talk ill of bastards before one. The conversation steered to safer topics: the rainfall, the matcha in front of them, the flooding of the Paraguay. With the bougainvillea blooming between the floorboards, death was a remote place.

After a decade in the harvest palace, Jaehyun knew the flowers would listen for him, so he poured their tea, cubed the lime cake, and bowed out of their invitation to sit, sweeping out of the dining room. Some days he flirted with a few of them. At times he singled out one to fall in bed with, but never for long. He pitted them against each other, stepped in as a sympathetic listener when they needed one, an ally with his father’s ear in hand. He asked questions he knew the answers to, laughed coyly behind his palm. Let them lust after a handsome, albeit dimwitted, prince.

It had not begun that way. 

His father had whisked him from forest to court with little more than a blurry goodbye to his mother and the clothes on his back. A stern _behave_ , then a flurry of sirens ushered him to the baths, scrubbing and combing and tying him off in robes smelling of lemon.

The palace had appeared like a storybook that night, filled with beautiful growing things. The ballroom, a mirage of fresh poppy bread and pink marble, was bursting with gods—including his sullen siblings.

 _Half-_ siblings, they were quick to correct him. Harvest and spring twined in a checkerboard of generations, but the pattern ended there. Where the crown of harvest chose a firstborn, a sixth child could wield spring next. Assuming, in tradition, that blood of the Mountain was blessed, their father had wed a sister of the high king’s, hoping to create the heir of spring in her womb. There were others, of course. Others like Jaehyun who had grown up in their own worlds. 

The elation of discovering he had siblings dissipated. His stepmother ignored him, but her children sought vengeance in her steed. They stole a bracelet a mortal friend had given him and tossed it in the sea. They poisoned his bathwater, giving him rashes instead of extra heads like they’d hoped. His room caught on fire twice. His first tutor, a satyr from the wilderness, hurried home.

By then, Jaehyun had learned enough to seek out another god—Jungwoo, a river deity who could parry swords in his sleep—and supplicated him to watch over his mother while he honed his spellwork.

A month later, a meadow he’d raised outside her forest snatched his siblings up by their feet. The buds fished out the flint in their pockets, eating the matchsticks. Clumsy magic, but it held them in place until their father was summoned and finally saw.

*

Youngho’s horses wove through the trees with ease. Closing his eyes, Jaehyun could imagine he was back over land, riding to the fields in an unspoiled morning. The courtiers, his father, his siblings, the few that weren’t fostered off in other palaces, were thousands of miles away.

They clattered over a bridge, the Styx rushing as a sleek ribbon below. Even in the daytime, its ripples were dark, mist hovering a hand's breadth above the waves. Jaehyun felt eyes on him. But when he looked back, there was no one.

The trees thinned, and they slowed at the edge of a valley.

Youngho jerked his chin at the city fanning out below, hemmed in by tracts of plowed soil and rice paddies. "Asphodel."

"I thought it was only a field," Jaehyun told him, wide-eyed. 

"It was," Youngho said. Their horses trotted down the slope. "But after some restless souls unseated the third god of death and broke out of the underworld, he enlisted help in...remodeling."

Squinting, Jaehyun could see laundry flapping between the tiled roofs. Coils of smoke rose up. "So they live again, for a little while."

"Some of them leave in a day. Some stay for several lifetimes. For light punishment, in some cases, or a reward." Youngho gave a noncommittal hum. "Depends on the soul."

The road wound through the farmland, city walls towering above the treeline. At Youngho’s gesture, the gates creaked open to steep stone steps. Guards, young gods in the pressed overcoats and silver buttons of the underworld’s employ, flanked each side. They saluted, faltering as they caught sight of Jaehyun. _They finally have face to the rumors,_ Jaehyun thought. One took their horses and waved them past.

The city was stirring awake. Children scrambled out a door, terriers yapping at their heels. A woman in plate armor pushed a wheelbarrow of pottery. Another peeled back a curtain, revealing stacks of snowy white cakes. Their skin was translucent, forms gelatinous. They paid Youngho and Jaehyun no heed.

Youngho stepped into the fray at times, conversing with a shopkeeper, muttering an _I’ll be back_ before vanishing into a building, nondescript next to its neighbors of the same faded brick. Each time, Jaehyun flattened himself against the walls, the tide of souls slipping around him. At least there was no one to correct his posture.

On a balcony, two men kissed. Through a window, a violin shrilled out a tune. Jaehyun tripped over the legs of a fresco painter, who spat at the ground and worked on. 

Drinking from the Lethe had freed them, in a way. 

"Heard the barkeep is going back," someone said. 

A finger pointed at the tavern Youngho had entered. "That one?"

They sounded muffled, as if in water, different languages babbling into one another. A face changed if he stared for too long, wrinkles sagging, hair curling, irises blue then brown. The magic was indiscernible. It was a soul’s bare state, or the curse dampened more than he’d thought. 

In the center of the city, a pavilion squatted over soil. Stalks swayed in the breeze. Jaehyun stared at the buds, recalling the painted plates in his studies. _Asphodel._ A piece of the old meadows. 

Youngho waved Jaehyun over. "The gods ask that their unruly children be assigned to character-building book work."

Peeking over the flowers, Jaehyun saw rows of scribes sitting stiff on the benches, brushes plodding across paper. Was one of his siblings here? Probably not; their father adored them, even after Jaehyun’s poppies caught them. The thought did not bring the usual bitterness today.

"Mark was here for a while, wasn’t he?" he asked.

"Yes." A wry slant took to Youngho’s mouth. The high king’s nephew was far less obedient than his son. "He and Donghyuck wouldn’t stop squabbling back then."

Donghyuck, in front of the senior gods, including the harvest, took on the sweet sunshine youth persona. Away from them, he riled others up, tricking Jaehyun’s vicious half-brothers into drinking manure on one occasion. "I remember. Did being sent down here actually help?"

"No," said Youngho ruefully. "But the absence got them to admit they’re fond of each other."

*

Their paths crossed, once. 

At a meeting on the Mountain (Fuji, that year), Jaehyun had spotted dark clothes, dark hair, the handsome profile of a somber face—and his entourage of sirens and nymphs swept him along.

They shielded Jaehyun from prying eyes on the Mountain, accompanying him to the baths and balls, stifling any opening to make acquaintances his father didn’t approve of. _Death is the enemy of spring,_ they whispered. _And this one is powerful._ There was fear there, but also awe.

Taeyong had been his only friend, those early years.

The oldest nymph in the harvest court, Taeyong could thumb the pulse of a land and decide the number of bees to spawn or the nutrients from an ashfall. He showed Jaehyun how to use his face to stay afloat in the world of divine royalty. If someone snapped at him for wine, he poured it, knowing he could poison the cup later. Though nymphs had their own brand of magic, Taeyong, in coaxing a seed open, pushed Jaehyun to wrestle his gift to that level of effortlessness. 

With Taeyong came Doyoung, god of healing and sunlight. Patron of oracles. "We came from the same lake," Doyoung had explained, unslinging a quiver of arrows. 

" _You_ lived beside it. _I_ actually was in it," Taeyong shot back. He had convinced Jaehyun’s father that Jaehyun needed archery lessons instead of sketching. They were both tired of Jaehyun’s hacked-out landscapes, Jaehyun drawing them, Taeyong judging them; a waste of parchment.

Doyoung rolled his eyes. "Same thing."

"I’ll push you in next time and you can tell me again."

"As if you could."

Jaehyun became fascinated with a moth on a tree trunk.

They didn’t get much archery done, some days. In the shade of the ginkgos—too ancient to meld or conceal a listener—no one was the wiser. Doyoung erred too much on the wild side for his father’s liking, trailing a chain of past lovers, gods and goddesses—not for having them, but for not being married, a perceived mark of stability. Yet he was blood of the Mountain, and sang prettily, and Jaehyun suspected his father hoped for a suit after Doyoung didn’t have someone by his side for years, never mind that the reason was the naiad right beneath his nose.

(Taeyong, when Doyoung was away, complained about his stupidly nice hands and kind heart. Doyoung, when Taeyong was turned, looked with a longing that was almost luminous.)

Doyoung made salve for Jaehyun’s rashes after the poisoned bath. Jaehyun learned to sneak out of the palace. He brought hard-boiled eggs to their lake after Taeyong left court life for good, wanting to work for no god, and they sat and peeled and splashed each other in the shallows. He met Donghyuck, the sun, and Renjun, the dawn, who hid their devilish grins behind their sleeves, free as birds.

Jaehyun continued to improve, and his father was content. The years numbed him. He was an amulet to shuffle from place to place, rewarding hamlets that prayed to the harvest, punishing others that let their altars rust.

*

The next day, Youngho brought him to Elysium, their horses kicking up dust on the hills. The land was unearthly in its vibrance, grass rippling in jade and gold beyond the ornate fence. No one was in sight.

Youngho drew out a pouch and recited a cleanse aloud. It had become a habit, one for Jaehyun’s benefit. Doyoung had always spoke of this king of death—quietly, out of the servants’ earshot—in friendly terms. Donghyuck had whined about his pranks and ear-pinching tendencies, which meant he found little in truth to pick on about. Jaehyun hadn’t believed them.

Youngho turned and tossed Jaehyun a red date.

Jaehyun caught it, closing his fingers over the smooth skin. He couldn’t see the seed or the water in the flesh.

He chewed on the fruit as they skirted the perimeter, listening to Youngho’s tidbits about the recent heroes, an abandoned cottage, glad to be out in the air with him. If he stayed behind in the palace for the day, the headache started by noon. 

Youngho drew up beside the river, letting their horses drink. "Pretty, huh?" 

An instinctive lie sat on Jaehyun’s tongue before he remembered. He glanced back at the serene hills, felt the silken wind tug the hairs at his nape. "It’s eerie."

Youngho hummed. "I usually don’t go in. The other gods don’t like others messing with their favorites." He threw Jaehyun another fruit. "The hero of Phthia and his lover were reincarnated again, last night. Though they have different names now, I suppose."

"Together?"

"Right."

"Romantic," Jaehyun said dryly.

Youngho grinned back at him. "Their judgments were before my time, though."

They remounted their horses. Unlike yesterday, Youngho had no business to take care of. Hills melded back to marshland. A flock of ghostly birds, extinct, arced over the clouds.

"Why show me all this?" Jaehyun asked. It had bothered him through the last evening, trying to tire himself by wandering the corridors again. At the stroke of two he’d trudged up the stairs to his room, buzzing with questions, before lying awake for the rest of the night. "Why tell me anything? I could report back to any of the others."

Youngho tilted his head. "What would they gain, from knowing the layout of my realm?"

He didn’t understand. "Leverage?"

"To get me to do what?"

"The sea and the sky are always fighting - and there are talks of them wanting to draw you to their side," Jaehyun hedged. Youngho’s tone was not defensive, or suspicious. Only curious. "Either of theirs. The kingdom of death is rich by nature. Anyone who allies with you would gain an advantage."

"And if I told you I only collect the bodies? By having my own wealth, I can’t be bribed."

"But there’s _something_ you must want." 

"I want to do my job in peace, which neither the sky king nor the sea queen can give me," Youngho said baldly. "Does that sound right?"

 _No,_ Jaehyun thought. In the palace, someone was always stepping on someone else, gods wanting to inch closer to his father’s power, gods wanting Jaehyun’s beauty and magic for themselves. On the Mountain, the high gods jostled over mortal wars. To be a god, to live forever, was to be ambitious. 

He remembered his mother, and her quiet shrine. Taeyong, Doyoung, and the quiet lake.

"Maybe," Jaehyun said. _You only do your duty,_ he’d blurted out in the throne room. He hadn’t thought before speaking, a misstep, but the words had rung true. Youngho had looked taken aback, probably at Jaehyun talking to him at all, but he'd seemed—grateful.

"I can live with that," Youngho said in the present. He nudged his horse close, holding out another date to him.

Jaehyun blinked, then plucked it from his palm, allowing their skin to brush. The curse drooped in repose. "Are you trying to distract me? With food?"

A sliver of a smile. "Is it working?"

"No." He lifted the fruit to his lips, then cracked a smile himself. "Yes."

Youngho was silent for a moment, and laughed, the sound bright in the dimness of the forest. "Honestly, though, being with you seems to satisfy the curse, meaning less headaches. There. That’s my selfish reason." He tossed away another seed and stared at the road ahead. "I thought you wouldn’t want to come, at first - but you could decide that for yourself."

Jaehyun was still smiling, though the breath snagged in his throat. 

A choice. At the mouth of the underworld, his father had been flushed with rage, pushing Jaehyun at the cursed barrier until his feet gave out from under him. The pain was blinding behind his eyes. Doyoung broke his father’s grip; the high king was summoned.

Youngho had held out his hand. He was not cold as a grave, as Jaehyun would have thought. He was like the other gods. Warm.

"Do you want him here?" Youngho had asked. 

Behind them, the cave echoed with shouts. When had his father sounded so desperate, so fragile without the immaculate veneer of control?

Jaehyun had shaken his head no.

*

"The nights are getting cooler," said Taeil. "Autumn may already be here."

Jaehyun turned the twig in his hands, staring at the scarlet-tipped leaves. It had been left in one of his temples, bowls of late summer offerings that Donghyuck deemed too good to waste and piled down in his carriage. "In the temperate zones? It’s the middle of August."

"It started in the north, which was normal," Taeil agreed, spinning the globe with a finger. Donghyuck sat behind him on the settee, braiding crowns out of the flowers. "But it’s creeping down into the lower altitudes."

"Any chance something else is behind it?" Youngho spoke up from the window seat.

"I don’t think so." Taeil grimaced. "It feels...familiar. Like before the god of spring was found in this generation. The balance is off." He took a sip of wine. "Donghyuck, you’ve been pulling on the same celestial tracks, right? Same horses?"

"Yes, and yes."

"As have I," Taeil said. 

"Nothing's wrong with the Phlegethon, too," Youngho added. "The ocean currents are normal as they can be. Yoohyeon even duplicated her readings over." He prodded at the notebook on the end table.

"I thought I was only needed once a year," Jaehyun said. He helped seeds grow, true, but his father had been doing that long ago. In the palace, there was a walled-in rose garden. Each descendent had planted a bush, squeezing memories into the thorns. The spring deities before him spent most of the year as any courtier: dancing, plotting, toying with mortals. 

"Please don’t underestimate yourself," Taeil said, finger pausing over the tropics. "The gift of spring balances the earth. It shifts the roots and rocks - even before you discovered your magic, you steadied things by simply being alive."

"Did - did you know the last deity of spring?" 

"I knew of her. The harvest god’s mother - your grandmother," Taeil said. "She left to become human in the tsardom, if I remember correctly. Even though you weren’t born yet, the earth safeguarded the gift until it was ready to be given again."

"Then it can’t see me right now," Jaehyun said slowly. "The earth."

"Right." Taeil rubbed his chin. "The fact that it can’t see you while knowing that the gift _should_ still be alive somewhere means the earth thinks it’s been robbed."

Donghyuck let out a low whistle.

"Or - that’s my theory." Taeil’s lips curved into a sheepish smile. "I’m only the moon."

"Who sees lots of things the others do not," Youngho said.

"Who can operate a cosmic rock with a _third_ of his consciousness," Donghyuck piled on, squeezing Taeil’s side.

Jaehyun laughed, lightly patting Taeil’s arm before he could hesitate.

Taeil ducked his head, cheeks a pleased pink. "Theories aside, the season shouldn’t be disappearing this soon. The balance is tipping too fast."

"What if _I_ ate the fruit, too?" Youngho asked, straightening. "What if that would complete the circle of the curse?"

"And what if you’re trapped down here, unable to move?" Donghyuck retorted. "Who’s going to collect and record the souls? The _ferry driver?_ "

"He’s capable," Youngho protested. 

Donghyuck scoffed, resuming his handicrafts. "Because you do most of the work for him. Kun makes me and Yangyang pick mint sometimes, so he can brew a tonic for him to not have bad breath and scare off the souls."

"He’s old and loyal, which are far from the worst things a god can be," Youngho said, rolling his eyes. "On another note, neither of you have seen the god of wine, have you?"

They shook his heads. The high king and queen’s firstborn, Mark’s feckless cousin, was the god of wine. He had a hand in springtime in exchange for some of the magic spun from mortal festivals and offerings.

"Mark has trouble finding him on a normal basis," Donghyuck said. He tied off stems, waltzing over to plunk the crown on Youngho’s head. "He probably camouflaged himself in a warm Tuscan vineyard."

"Kunhang said he last saw him in the sky court last month." Youngho took up the sheaf of papers beside Yoohyeon's report, flipping through the notes. He looked up at Jaehyun. "Your people haven’t found any trace of him either, right?"

Jaehyun raised a brow, but Youngho was still shuffling through the papers. He wasn’t hiding his informants, yet saw little point in airing out his holdings. Youngho didn’t let people know what he knew; a respectable tactic. "No luck. Anyone would have trouble finding him if he turned into a bunch of grapes."

"I’d like to be able to do that," Donghyuck said.

"Nothing’s stopping you," Youngho said.

"Um, Doyoung gets on my ass if I show up to work two minutes behind schedule."

"Language. And it was a whole hour, he told me."

Taeil turned to Jaehyun. "Before you were found, the wine god didn’t wield much power over the seasons. The nymphs and local gods had to strain to muster up spring in their regions."

Jaehyun had known as much. He traced the swirling lines of the table’s trim with his pinky. June, July, then August, he had been gone. "The blood of the Mountain isn’t worth much, is it."

"Or he wasn’t high king’s to begin with," Donghyuck stage-whispered.

"Oi." Youngho shoved his back with a slippered foot. "Let’s not spread gossip where I can hear you."

"Then I’ll write it so you can’t hear me."

Youngho sighed, looking over at the wine bottle in the tub of ice.

"We’ll keep searching," Taeil said, turning the globe again. "Surely he must know the people need him, however little he may do."

"Why not ask the west wind?" Youngho asked. "Doyoung’s on the Balkans next week. He can deliver the request in person for us."

Taeil hummed. "The west wind is fickle at best, but it doesn’t hurt to ask." 

"Or could you ask Renjun to ask for us?" Jaehyun had noted the jealous sneer on the west wind’s lips, Taeyong laughing by Doyoung’s side at a banquet.

Youngho caught his eye. "Alright. The winds are supposed to answer to the dawn anyways since their keeper had fallen. Renjun has built up enough authority, young as he is."

"And what about _me_?" Donghyuck mock-sniffed. "Youngho, me or Injun?"

Youngho smirked. "Chenle."

*

Taeil and Donghyuck sailed for the surface, flowers crowning their heads. Back upstairs, Jaehyun foraged an account on bitter orange, pickled in wisdom magic. A heroine had eaten the jam and slew giants on the sands of the south. The god of war rejoiced while the goddess of love poisoned her drink; the rest of the pages lamented her fate as a cockatoo and the whims of the gods.

Jaehyun slumped on the table, listening to the clock tick to the time on the Mountain. The library was sweet from the scent of crushed petals. Memories came, but he did not miss his household.

Youngho snapped closed his notes, the sound muffled by the teetering shelves. His flower crown sat on his lap; his jaw was stark in the red glare of the fire. The fall of his shirt hinted at the muscles beneath, and a goblet glinted at his elbow.

He could have been a painting.

Before Jaehyun could react, he looked up and smiled, patting the space next to him.

Jaehyun hesitated, then took the short steps over, sinking down onto the window seat. 

Alone with Youngho, the monster many depicted him as, Jaehyun no longer thought to be afraid. He was simply another god. A friend of a friend. Gods drew power from mortals, their offerings and prayers, and death would always be feared. Admiration and fear braided into tall tales.

 _Not_ just _another god_. What could he call this strange intimacy from being cursed with someone?

Jaehyun swallowed, spoke up. "You haven’t been sleeping well." 

Youngho was unreadable. "Neither have you, it looks like."

Yukhei, a descendent of Sleep, had brought out his panpipes and glazed xun, even lugging over Ten’s calfskin timpani in a raft, to no avail. The curse was too ingrained to budge. Jaehyun dangled on the cusp of sleep, lying for hours, his bed too hot then cold.

In the quiet, Youngho cracked open a novel. Jaehyun didn’t touch another scroll. He drew his knees to his chest, watching Youngho from the corner of his eye. The warmth of the room and the wine in his belly mixed into a heavy drowsiness, and he pictured summer, its amber afternoons, raindrops on the roof, cicadas shrieking from the trees. Damson plums, tart on his tongue. Around him, obsidian and marble thrummed as a cathedral bell, slow and plangent, the marshland syrupy with sediment.

His cheek struck solid bone.

He flinched up from Youngho’s shoulder. "Sorry."

"It’s alright," Youngho said, amused. He had been staring at the same page for the past something-odd minutes. As Jaehyun watched, he dog-eared it and shut the book, shifting to face him. "Do you want to come up to my room?"

Something amiss must have shown in Jaehyun’s expression, as Youngho doubled over, choking with mirth. "To _sleep._ Rest," he amended. He reached out a fingertip, grazed the tired skin below Jaehyun’s eyes. "I won’t pretend I know what’s going on with us, the curse—" he made a vague gesture, "but I’d rather not keep going on like this."

A cool relief bloomed at the simple touch. "Is this what the scenic trips have been leading up to?" Jaehyun teased. _Don’t overthink._ "An invitation to the king’s bed?"

Youngho shoved at Jaehyun’s shoulder, mirroring his unfurling smile. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes." He paused. "Now?"

"Unless you feel like holding your eyelids open some more."

Jaehyun nodded. "I’ll wash up and meet you there."

Apprehensively, he brushed his teeth, splashed his face, and changed into his pajamas, part of the haphazard pack Doyoung had broke in and brought for him from the harvest court. On the side table, Jaehyun set Donghyuck’s flower crown next to the browning peonies.

Youngho’s chambers were down the hall from the guest rooms, alone behind a set of double doors. One had been left open. Tentatively, Jaehyun stepped into a sitting area, where a bay window overlooked the marshland.

The underworld was beautiful, he realized, taking another step. The velvet nights, the glassen lake, fog shrouding the cypresses in white. The palace itself: plain furniture, elaborate reliefs, veined black marble. The domed garden above the courts, carpeted with moss, where he’d found his breath after waking for the first time.

Fred slithered between his ankles, pulling him from his thoughts. It cocked its head at Jaehyun. _Come on._

"You alright with the snakes coming in and out?" A peek in the doorway showed Youngho, hair damp, fluffing up the pillows. "You can say no."

Jaehyun rubbed Fred’s neck scales. "As long as they don’t pee on me, I don’t mind."

"They only pee on you if you taunt them with pork. Mark’s experiences, not mine."

Jaehyun laughed, and Youngho flashed him a grin. He had laid out separate blankets for each of them. The bed looked comfortable, wide.

The only thing left was to lie down.

Feet oddly leaden, he walked into the bedroom proper. Jaehyun had shared a bed with many a courtier, had passed out drunk with Taeyong’s pointy elbows in his ribs and Doyoung octopus-clinging to both of them, but this— _this_ was different. He was turning his back on his father, trusting the god of death. Trusting what he felt and saw over the patterns drummed into him.

 _Don’t overthink._ Think.

Youngho waited until he picked a side, then climbed in after him, the bed dipping with his weight. The candles gusted out.

Jaehyun slept within the minute.


	3. fall

A door shut, followed by the patter of shoes on stone. Youngho turned off the spout with a whispered word.

"Did any gunk get on my back?" He rolled up his sleeves, scrubbing his hands and wrists with a cake of soap. Even breathing from his mouth, the stink of corruption burned his nose.

Jaehyun stepped closer. "No, not any I can see." Youngho pictured him frowning, running absent fingers through his hair. "And what gave me away?"

Back turned, Youngho smiled to himself. "A feeling."

"Of?"

"I don’t know. A feeling."

He was rewarded with an impassive sigh. Jaehyun, without his powers, was bored as a sailor in calm seas. Youngho was simply relieved that he trusted him enough to show a thimbleful of his true self, frustrations and all.

He bid the fountain to run again and held his arms under the icy spray. The balance between conjuring fire and warming a cup of tea, something Dejun or Donghyuck did with a snap of their fingers, was lost on him.

"Another one?" Nose scrunched, Jaehyun crept forth, inspecting the filthy sword propped against the balustrade.

"Two, in fact." Youngho scrubbed the dried blood under his nails. "Both in Hanyang. Yukhei got swiped, but nothing his ichor can’t heal."

October—the season of rains, haunts, and occult dabblings. A magician had intended to unleash demons on a rival’s holdings, but they slaughtered three-quarters of the imperial brigade instead.

Jaehyun hummed in sympathy. When one of Youngho's sleeves slid down, he stepped in and winched it back up for him. "I saw you wield this silver sword before. Sorn’s work, right?"

"Her apprentice’s, actually. Jisung." Youngho paused. A slip of a memory, being summoned to one of the harvest god’s lush lands. _I would have remembered speaking with his son._ "Since when did you see me use it?"

Jaehyun smiled faintly. "It was a long time ago. A demon got loose - it blighted a whole rice crop for years even though we confined it early. I, er, turned into a pear tree so I could stay."

"Ah."

"You looked knightly."

"Seriously."

"Fine, don’t believe me."

Youngho stopped the water, shaking his arms dry. Jaehyun, used to his mischief, had already stepped a safe distance away. 

They entered the palace, where a welcome fire crackled in the back parlor. Fred and Jason basked on the hearth before it. 

"Do you two not have a palace to guard?" Youngho drawled.

They turned, throwing him twin hangdog expressions.

"He didn’t mean it, you move quickly anyways," Jaehyun countered. Jason, the traitor, nuzzled his shin.

Youngho took a pinch of powdered pig bones on the mantel and threw it into the fire. A hiss; Dejun’s glittering magic took hold. He threw the silver sword in, letting the flames cook the corruption from the metal.

Despite the assortment of chairs, Jaehyun scooted over on the bench, lump of clay in hand. He was warm through Youngho’s sleeve, where their arms brushed.

They had run out of ideas. None of them wanted to lose, not to an invisible enemy. They went ragged, chasing an increasingly complex and elusive solution.

So he and Jaehyun settled into a rhythm. They mucked around the marsh in the evenings, took turns brewing the coffee because the stubborn pewter pot refused to be trained. Youngho donned his crown and sat on his throne, hearing the usual noble disputes, and Jaehyun busied himself with books, clay, cauldron recipes. They slept in the same bed, not touching.

Above, the west wind slowed the march of winter. The gods were quiet.

He felt the moment Jaehyun formed a question on his tongue.

"What are the groves like?"

*

The house of dreams hid behind a screen of willows on the Lethe. It was two stories of blue-green granite, billowy curtains, windows set in the walls like eyes.

Kun opened the door in a floury apron, squinting against the daylight. "Before you ask, he passed out in the baths."

"Makes sense." Youngho slid off his shoes on the toadstool mat. "It was past his bedtime." 

Kun blew out a laugh. "More like the taint drained his reserves. But he’ll learn."

Sure enough, Yukhei was snoring away on a hammock between two pillars. The spotless kitchen was crammed with orchids, each bud belching out vanilla. Yukhei and Youngho had wrestled the demons through this room to Kun’s laboratory, animal entrails drying on their cloaks.

"Anything new with these summonings?" Youngho asked. The purification had gone without a hitch. Stripped of their corruption, the souls had sat limp in his boat to the judgment courts.

"Surprisingly, yes," said Kun. "One of the sacrifices was Consort Gyeong’s child with the last emperor. It explains why his demon caused so much destruction and was able to hit Yukhei."

Taeyong’s nymph mother and his demigod siblings were notorious in the realm. The first time he’d met Taeyong, the naiad had looked straight at him, hollow-eyed, through the ghosts of two Joseon princes.

"He let his magician have his own child?"

"He has others. The faction tensions are flaring up again."

Youngho leaned back. "And so they said, may the war altars be full." 

"And _your_ job endless," Kun said dryly. He took out a rolling pin Youngho knew for sure Ten didn’t own. "How have you been sleeping, by the way?"

"Fine," Youngho said, mistrusing Kun’s innocuous smile in response. The curse _was_ looser, more akin to a loop of yarn than the bite of steel fetters as before. He changed the subject, entertaining Kun with the latest noble dramas, Kun cooking for his acolytes. Yukhei smacked his lips in his sleep, limbs askew.

The kitchen door swung open. A porter with a bowl-cut bounded in.

"Hello, dearest," he crooned.

Kun frowned. "Don’t come near me with that bush of thorns."

"Prickly, prickly, I know," Ten said. His face glistened and melted, scraggly beard sloughing away. He brushed a kiss to Kun’s cheek, hooked the mask on the wall, then noticed Youngho. "Good, you’re already here. Want to hear my news?"

"Did Yeoreum get turned back from a beetle?" Youngho asked, recalling the latest mischief in the neighborhood. "At this point, I might have to intervene if she hasn’t."

"Sadly, yes. It was her brother, though, that was boasting about his invitation to a certain harvest ball this week."

"I thought he was in a state of desolation ever since - what does Chunhee think?"

"He was deciding between his beige shirt or the one with ruffles to wear."

"The beige one is ugly. And?"

"He doesn’t think anything much, besides macarons and a large cellar of fine wine." Ten smiled. "He _did_ mention, though, that their neighbors were invited as well."

Youngho raised his brows. The harvest god had invited two families of the underworld while bypassing the throne. Not to recruit spies, surely, if he had done it this openly. A barbed statement? A change of tactic since he couldn’t get Youngho’s head on a pike? "If we make a fuss out of it, that’ll add to the harvest god’s importance. We could be playing into his hands."

"That seems likely, given his vanity." Ten traced shapes in the flour dust. "I say ignore him. Kun?"

"Chunhee and Asou - they were the bitterest after Youngho won the throne, right?" Kun said.

"And Yukhei’s great aunt," Ten added, grinning. "Remember the coronation after-party?"

"Ugh. Don’t remind me." Youngho kept a scar where Sleep’s heavy axe had caught him on the bicep. The trials had been conducted behind the palace walls or in the wee hours of dawn on the misty lake, no observers save for the abdicating king and his consort. Still, rumors ecked their way past. Jealousies festered. Whether they were enough to ambush a god and poison him, bind him here, was debatable.

"Has the harvest god always been this bold? The situation must have made him truly desperate, to risk offending his court," said Kun. He moved to wipe down the countertop, but Ten caught his wrist and laced their fingers together. Casually, as if they hadn’t danced around each other for years before getting drunk on peppermint schnapps and kissing behind Youngho’s hedge rows at a winter soiree. The bush leafed in silver every spring after, to Ten’s unending delight.

"For better or worse," said Youngho. "He keeps a tight leash on his domain. It may not matter to him."

"Dejun could be our ears for the night - if he’s laid low enough to be invited like I advised him to." Kun sighed. "Kunhang has also been showing off his prisms. Even so, it’ll be hard finding the right conversations in a party like that."

"The harvest god isn’t the type to carelessly discuss things out in the open, either. Jaehyun did say he used flowers to listen in - I don’t know if it can be adapted to either of their magics."

Kun nodded, forehead wrinkling. "I’ll arrange a time to talk it over." He let go of Ten’s hand and spelled the rags into motion. Silence skittered in, save for the crimping of piecrusts.

"I can hear both of you worrying," Ten said. "Let the harvest lord fume until he drops dead." He tilted his chin at Youngho. "In other news, is it blissful in paradise?"

"We’re living in hell," Youngho droned.

"Technically, it’s the underworld," Ten said primly. He flopped down on the stool next to Youngho’s, sniffing an orchid. "How _is_ paradise?" Ten lowered his voice. "You haven’t hosted a gathering in months. People are thinking you’re keeping him to yourself, having wild sexual adventures."

While used to Ten’s snark, Youngho wanted to choke on air. "As if Jaehyun wants every god of the underworld gawking at him for hours," he said, addressing the safest statement. "Or trying to sneak around the palace to see him."

"That was _one_ time. Your snakes are fiends."

"They're doing their jobs." Youngho looked down at his fingers, feeling oddly self-aware. The past months were pebbles to a god's lifespan, but far from forgettable. "What do you think of him?"

Ten pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Honestly? He’s strange. Not sure if in a good or bad way. Plus, he’s quiet. He got used to us, though."

 _The harvest court is vicious,_ Taeyong had told him. _And hard to break in._ Youngho had gleaned tidbits from fringe gods sullen under the harvest rule. They recounted a docile, sweet-tempered god of spring, nursing their farms and orchards to health. Always remembering their spouses’ favored fruits, their childrens’ names.

Alone, at his desk, walking the halls, Youngho thought that Jaehyun was many things, but not docile. There was a resolve simmering in him, a hairline crack running beneath the surface. He spoke of his half-siblings, tormenting a frost spirit; his father, rooting out treachery, real or imagined; himself, for not doing enough.

Youngho pushed his stool back. "I’m heading home."

"So eager to leave us." Ten’s mouth twitched into a smirk. "Now that you have a pretty god waiting in your bed."

Youngho swatted his shoulder. Jaehyun was pretty, and slept in his bed, yes, but not in the way Ten was implying. Youngho _liked_ Jaehyun. He liked to think they could have become friends anyways, given a normal beginning. He had lived alone for so long, and now Jaehyun walked his halls, laughed at his stupid jokes, slept next to him every night like he'd always been here. "Let’s not put it like that."

Ten patted Youngho’s arm in farewell. "Or what? It’ll come true?"

*

Youngho didn’t visit the groves often— _Groves_ , more aptly, with a capital underpinning, the slice of land behind the palace that took no water from any river. The soil was rich and dark, the mist coiling thick around the iron gates. The trees pressed in close. They seemed to stare, different from the burning rage of Tartarus’s prisoners or the keenness of young scribes or reapers. They were watchful, patient, like statues.

Jaehyun looked up at his entrance with small smile. He held a leaf of each kind: the staid bitter orange, the heart-shaped persimmon, the slender pomegranate.

"How does it go?" Youngho wasn’t sure what _it_ was. When Jaehyun had asked to come here days ago, he didn’t know either.

"As if I’m supposed to be here, but I don’t know for what." Jaehyun twirled the persimmon leaf between his fingers. "Whether it’s going to help or not, I don’t know that either."

"Sounds like magic to me," Youngho said. Above him, a pomegranate tree frothed with scarlet blossoms. The one beside it was bare as a skeleton. Earth’s seasons trickled down to the underworld, but time was slippery in these fences.

Jaehyun snorted. "I would’ve disagreed if you’d said that before. But now I know a little of what you’re talking about."

"Only a little?"

"A lot," Jaehyun conceded. "It’s a feeling."

Youngho laughed, turning to face him, then jolted. Jaehyun's hood had fallen back. "Your—"

"My hair?" Jaehyun lifted a hand. Once lilac, the color had gone from his locks, still metallic in shine, bleeding to a charcoal gray near his nape. "I saw it in the mirror this morning. It must have happened overnight."

 _If it was these trees._ Youngho had an early start, sitting in on Dejun and Kunhang’s account of the uneventful harvest ball. The bedroom had been dark. "What did you do?"

"I don’t know," Jaehyun admitted. "I tried different things to see if the - the pull got any stronger. Something must have worked. I climbed on their branches, talked to them. Gave them water."

"Is it..." Again, the imprecision of words. "—a bad thing?"

"No. The trees feel different. Not in a malicious way." He saw Youngho’s eyes, the dubious concern there. He dimpled. "Does it really look that bad?"

Youngho caught himself. "No." Jaehyun was as stunning as always, but the symbolism edged too close to a decaying flower for levity. "Nothing could look bad on you."

Jaehyun threw him a skeptical look, and went back to his leaves. A pink dusted his ears when Youngho chanced a glance back.

Youngho flopped below a tree, grounding himself, ignoring the worry roiling in his gut. On the surface, joss paper sizzled in a tin bucket. An ocean away, rosary beads clanked at a funeral. Ewers slopped wine. A couple of gods wrestled on the grass for the libation; Youngho glided past them and took the phantom in hand, a ferryman waiting nearby.

"Do plants not die near you?" Jaehyun’s voice drew him from his stupor. 

"They don’t," said Youngho, blinking away the sunlight.

Jaehyun was pressing leaves into the pages of a book, mouth a troubled line. "Even the ones on the surface?"

"No. I should’ve guessed you’re like Taeyong. A path of flowers grows behind him if he doesn’t pay attention."

"After I trained, yes." Jaehyun chewed his lip. "But - you’re the god of death."

"I lead them. I don’t kill them," said Youngho. "At least, not very often. Fields stay green when I walk over them. Did you expect bands of magma and destruction wherever I go?"

"Something of the sort," Jaehyun said slowly. "I always thought death was the enemy of spring."

It made sense: the startled doe in his step, those early days. The retinue of sirens and nymphs looking coldly upon him on Mount Fuji. _A sewer rat, barely grown._ He knew a flash of anger, vague and self-righteous, letting it dissipate with the next breath. Holding a throne for this long meant not chasing every slight done. He knew the slow poison of someone you’d admired.

Jaehyun had gone silent.

Youngho bumped their shoulders together. "That explains things, actually. It doesn’t matter. You’re here—"

Shouts shattered the air beyond the trees. Unfamiliar footsteps.

Spinning, Youngho unbuckled the shortsword at his side, holding it out for Jaehyun to take. "You were trained on this, weren’t you?" He'd picked up one useful thing from listening to Taeyong and Doyoung talk about their friend, at least. 

Eyes wide, then calm, Jaehyun nodded. He took the polished bone handle. Youngho rushed to the gates, motioning the stationed guards to hold, then alighted on the path to the palace.

A knot of people stood frozen in the north courtyard. On the marble steps, one of his soldiers pressed a knife to an archer’s throat, bow broken at his feet.

The captain of his guard bowed. "Your Majesty, Jason has caught an intruder in your chambers."

*

In the same year Doyoung and Sooyoung budded on a palm tree, the goddess of love emerged from an oyster on the seashore. She kept to herself, her magic subtle, precise, intervening only when a hero caught her eye. Though never close, they exchanged pleasantries well enough.

At least, Youngho thought they had.

"I cannot release souls," he said, gauging her numb expression. It was what most surface deities came to him for. "You can find them, try to talk to them, but until it’s time for their rebirth, they stay."

Somin shook her head. A strand of hair wisped loose from her braid.

They sat in the windowless room behind the throne hall, Jaemin inching a piping cup of tea toward her elbow, feathers quivering. Youngho remembered him running alongside Donghyuck and Renjun on Taeil’s isle, wingless and cherub-cheeked like the rest of them. _He grew into his power well._ Several of his soldiers nursed wounds from his arrows.

On his summons, a stack of quilts arrived, hovering before them. Tentatively, Jaemin took one. Somin did not.

Youngho schooled his breath. There was no use beating around it. "Did you kidnap and poison the god of spring?" 

"What? _No._ " Somin looked at him, really looked at him. She gripped the sides of the cup. "You don’t understand."

He met her eyes. "Help me understand."

Somin sighed. Her shoulders tightened. "They have her."

"Who?"

"Jiwoo."

The nereid who had walked out of the waves and swore her sword to Somin. The woman the goddess of love would break into another's palace for.

She nodded at Jaemin, and he held his arms out, palms up. A slim parcel fell out, wrapped in a cotton sheet. Youngho caught it with both hands. It was heavier than it looked. 

"They told me I could save her if I put this in the back of your wardrobe," Somin explained. She drew back the folds.

Youngho saw the diamond first, large as an orange, uncut. Bronze claws cinched it in place, spiraling down a lacquered wooden shaft. It held the power to sunder the earth. He had only seen the sceptre in drawings. 

Somin lifted the sheet to the lamplight. At the corner, tiny but unmistakable, thread stitched the constellation of the dragon.

"Who is her captor?" Youngho asked, already with an inkling of the answer.

Her eyes sharpened, betraying nothing. "I cannot say."

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Cold thrilled up his chest. Someone had taken pains to obtain a bedsheet from an underworld house. "You cannot, or will not?"

"Cannot," she said.

"Someone has cursed you."

She made to reply but strained against an invisible wire, clutching her throat. Jaemin, pained, squeezed her arm until the magic subsided. It was answer enough.

Somin commanded illusion, could suppress her presence to be no more than an ant on his wards if she wished it so. Jason would have had to smell her rather than sense her. The snake would be preening for days.

"There’s one other thing," Somin said, regaining her breath. "Examine here, on the sheet."

He caught her meaning, flaring ichor to his sight. A thumbprint glowed where she pointed. Hasty necromancy, or what someone wanted him to think was hasty necromancy. The chief skill of the other underworld house invited to the harvest party.

"This wouldn’t have convinced me," said Youngho.

"Someone thought it might. Sometimes it starts with a single seed of doubt."

Careful not to touch it, Youngho wrapped the sceptre again. He considered the goddess of love, the worry locked in her posture. He had to make sure. "Besides this task, you had nothing to do with the god of spring’s kidnapping."

"I swear it on the Styx." Somin held his steady gaze. "You can siphon part of it for me."

He summoned the hammered brass bowl from the pantry and channeled the river into it. Somin drained the whole puddle. 

Youngho relaxed a fraction in his chair, considering the sight in front of him. The goddess of love and her winged archer. In the backdrop of black marble, their robes were resplendent, hair shining. "You took a risk, trusting me." 

Soft, some might say. Or clever. Jaehyun had never said which he thought.

Somin took a draught of her cold tea, her relief evident. "Not as great as the ones I have already taken, coming here."

Youngho could have thrown her and her crew into the dungeons and petitioned the Mountain to hold judgment, protecting himself, her lover forgotten in the upheaval. But he would not get any closer to finding Jaehyun’s—and now Jiwoo’s—captors.

"I’ll keep Jaemin in my care, then," Youngho said. The archer dipped his head; he looked resigned to the role of hostage. "Unless he would be missed by the perpetrators?"

Somin twitched her fingers at an empty chair. Jaemin, mirrored to the individual rubies in his ears, crossed his ankles and blinked coolly.

"I’m never going to get used to that," the real Jaemin muttered.

A trace of humor flitted across Somin’s face. "Then don’t," she said, flicking her lieutenant’s forehead. She rose. "I will try to send a message when it’s clear, but it may be a while. They have eyes everywhere."

Youngho stood as well. "It’s to be expected. Get her out of immediate danger first."

She opened the door but didn’t go out, illusion-Jaemin pausing the customary half-step behind her. "It's been a fair amount of months, King Youngho."

Youngho considered her lighter, knowing tone of voice. "It has."

"Enough time. You would do anything for him, wouldn't you?"

Youngho felt the force of the answer in the marrow of his bones. When he’d discovered that the nymph the high king hinted at was _Taeyong_ , he’d almost burst an organ laughing at Doyoung. _What are you afraid of?_ he’d asked, to which Doyoung responded, _Everything._ Youngho thought he understood better, now.

Aloud, he said neutrally, "I would do many things for a friend in need."

Somin gave him a thin smile. "Heroic. Except the monarch of death patrons no heroes."

*

Jaehyun stacked his hands on the windowsill, his chin atop them. "Not anyone could curse the goddess of love in broad daylight."

"Exactly. It narrows the list down." Youngho shucked off his gloves and dropped them on the end table. "I used to think they were underworld gods, someone biting more than they could chew. Small fish."

Jaehyun stilled. "You’re suspecting the Mountain gods."

"Yes. Straight to the top." He tapped the crown on his head and hefted it off.

"You don’t mean the high king and queen?"

"You sound skeptical."

"I am." Jaehyun turned back to the window. "I know I shouldn’t be. They treated me well for the sake of appearances. Alliances."

"I’m only speculating though," said Youngho. "Few people can best Lady Jiwoo in a swordfight. Whoever it is, they didn’t want to risk sneaking in themselves again - easier for Somin to take the fall if she got caught. It could be either of them, or none of them."

"Or both?"

"Or both." The king and queen of the gods, even when they were busy seducing others, could get strangely loyal in diplomatic affairs. The sky god had beheaded a favored cupbearer for stealing his wife’s rings intended for some Persian royal matchmaking.

Youngho traced the embroidery on his waistcoat. With his crown, it had been part of his ensemble for the past few hours. The palace now quartered two underworld houses under the guise of emergency patchwork in Tartarus, roping in a wood nymph and the spinner of nightmares for good measure. To the outside world, he detained them for suspected treason. With luck, the rumor would spread, and whoever was behind Jaehyun’s and Jiwoo’s attacks would think, satisfied, that Youngho had taken the bait.

"Kun said whoever brewed my poppy wine botched the recipe," Jaehyun said.

Youngho hummed. "It wouldn’t have been good, to say the least, if the corruption wasn’t drained in time." Jaehyun, gaunt and limp on the bed. "Why?"

"Because the king is terrible at precision," Jaehyun said blandly. "He tried to make fast-growing grain for his cattle but ended up jinxing himself to have tubers for hands and feet."

"You never told me about that."

"He swore each of us there to secrecy, but it got out anyways. He lied that one of the grain gods tried to kill him, and my father had no choice but to send him into exile." Jaehyun shook his head. "Another time, one of my father’s advisors taught him how to make an aphrodisiac out of hawthorn. He picked up cherry blossoms instead, so the evening he’d been hoping for turned out—" 

"—I think I know where this ends," Youngho wheezed. "Mark mentioned it, though I wouldn’t have guessed it was his uncle’s fault. The poor kid was scarred. What happened to the grain god?"

"He’s a miller somewhere," said Jaehyun, after a moment’s thought. Youngho was not surprised he knew. "The worst of his problems is that he has to change villages every so often, or else the mortals get suspicious and break out the stake because he’s not aging."

"Not bad. Not the metamorphosis into an earthworm as I expected."

Jaehyun laughed. "My father had too much pride and lacks imagination, but he’s not cruel. Especially when it comes to his court."

"Fair enough." Whims didn’t fit the harvest god’s uptight nature, in any case. The high king, however: "Are you saying his majesty may have brewed your poppy wine?"

"It fits other parts of the story, if you think about ti."

"Other—" Youngho had assumed the pomegranate had been filched directly from the groves when there were alternate routes. "Of course. He and his wife are in charge of the ambrosia each year. They could have hung onto the leftover fruit somewhere."

"Is there anyway to prove it?"

"Not that I know of."

Jaehyun made a faint noise of assent. "He has the power to make up for the lack of finesse. A lot of it. Could he have suppressed your wards?"

"Smothering instead of sneaking - it’s possible." Youngho grinned down at him. "I swear you know more about my magic than I do." 

Jaehyun smiled, almost shyly. "An outside perspective can be clearer. And we’re still talking about the unprovable." He lifted his arms, stretching. Youngho tried not to dwell on the pale column of his throat, what would it look like bitten with kisses. All that lofty talk about keeping it in his trousers too. 

He wondered, briefly, if someone was waiting for Jaehyun on the surface. A sinewy god of the pasture; a dryad, wildflowers in her hair. Pushing the thoughts away, Youngho asked, "‘My father’s court’?"

"What?"

"Your father’s court." Youngho tipped his chin. "Not yours?"

Jaehyun continued staring out the window. He liked to watch the mist roll in, Youngho knew. It reminded him of old forests. 

"No, not mine," he said quietly. Jaehyun didn’t sound dejected or wistful, as Youngho would have thought; he sounded conflicted. Youngho’s pulse jumped. "The court will never be mine." His low voice, stronger.

Rain rushed down, lashing the panes, wind whistling, storms without lightning. The chambers were hushed, dim with a solitary lamp. In this light, Youngho couldn’t tell if his hair was lilac or gray.

The god of spring, golden and gorgeous. Jaehyun, golden and gorgeous and ashen. Youngho bit back the lurid bubble of hope. Just because the harvest palace wasn’t Jaehyun’s home didn’t mean _Youngho’s_ could be, either. They had gone more than a hundred years without speaking more than twenty words to each other. He wouldn’t stay by choice.

Oblivious, Jaehyun lit a candle for a book, and Youngho prepared for his Asphodel rounds, throwing himself into deciphering the particular judge’s bad handwriting. It was comfortable, Jaehyun reading out sentences that amused him, Youngho threatening to spoil the plot when he recognized the book, Jaehyun clapping his palms over his ears, his entire frame shaking with laughter.

 _I want to remember this moment,_ Youngho thought suddenly, gripping the brush in his hands. Rain and wind murmured against the glass. He wanted to be selfish, but would not.

*

On the tallest mountain in the world, the hero of the Yangtze crouched in the snow, melting cocoa. He yelped when Youngho stepped out of the darkness.

"Sorry," Youngho said, holding up a hand.

"No, you’re not," Chenle muttered. He wiggled his fingers, and the liquid arced back into its cup. "Your Highness," he added as an afterthought.

"It’s strange, seeing you young again." Youngho ruffled his hair. "Wrinkles didn't suit you."

Chenle pretended to cringe, yet relaxed under the attention. After his monster-slaying journey across the continent and retirement as a schoolteacher, he’d ascended to godhood, blessed by the goddess of the sea. Taeil had spun him a tower of crystal on his celestial isle, but he often lingered in the mortal realm, as tonight.

"What happened to your blade?" Youngho pointed at Chenle’s empty scabbard, Jisung’s confection of teak and white jade. 

"‘m cleaning it," said Chenle. He lifted the sword from under the coals, glowing with hearth magic. Why he decided to drink hot cocoa on an icy cliffside was beyond him; Donghyuck would tease Youngho about the enigma of godly youth. "Vampires, upyr, whatever you call them - they’ve been attacking the nearby valleys."

"Since when?" 

"Since a couple days ago. They say people are getting snatched if they stay out after sunset." 

Youngho stared at the sword in the coals. He walked through the blur of souls he'd collected, the logs his reapers kept. "You’re certain the bodies were drained."

Chenle nodded, spoon clanking in his cup. 

The vampires Youngho knew were ancient and staid, subsisting on livestock. New ones snuck up every now and then, borne from death by certain toxins or defiled graves, but never enough to threaten an entire hamlet.

"People also say these have been the coldest nights," Chenle added, as if reading Youngho’s mind. "Tonight was even colder. Kunhang and Mark are spreading the alarm up to the borders, and the nymphs and centaurs, including her," he pointed up at the shadowy mountain’s peak, "are aware."

"Looks like we can’t stop it forever," Youngho said, scooping snow with his fingers. A dozen demons had cropped up this past night alone, along with a drakon. October’s magic shouldn’t be this potent.

Chenle eyed him. "Is he..."

"Still trapped with me." Youngho rubbed his temples. No headache, but he couldn’t stay away for much longer. He’d been out since eventide; Taeil’s half-lidded chariot was sinking below the mountains, marking time. Yesterday, a pomegranate tree had reached out and touched the tip of Jaehyun’s nose; he couldn’t discern if it was an act of aggression or friendliness. "Something’s - _changing_ him with the groves. I don’t know if it’s helping."

Chenle hugged his knees. "You’ll figure something out. If not now, then later."

"What if it takes a hundred years to break?"

"Then I’m safe. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m dead already."

Youngho laughed, the sound echoing down the mountainside. Piles of snow had long buried the opulent ruins of past Mountain meetings. "In that case, all of humanity might as well freeze to death. You were the last mortal I cared about."

He shook the flakes from his hair, declining Chenle’s offer of cocoa. He would send swordsmen to help him tomorrow night. 

Miraculously, the palace was still standing when he returned. Donghyuck and Renjun slept cozy in Jaemin’s room, magicked to appear as a cell from the outside, cobwebs spanning the walls. They’d rushed down with Jeno, a nereid from the arctic circle, and Mark, who thrust Chenle’s message into Youngho’s hands and hurried off at his queen aunt’s summons, vowing with a sip of river water to reveal nothing at the sky court. 

Youngho docked his boat and entered through the back door. Down here, it was midnight; his bathwater reflected the wheel of stars. Not bothering with a candle, he dried and dressed in the dark, pausing on the second floor to slot his scythe in the library fireplace.

In his chambers, Jaehyun laid on his side, clinging to a pillow. His face was smooth, none of the sharpness when he was awake. 

He smelled like Youngho’s olive soap. The shape of him was warm and familiar as Youngho settled behind him, spine brushing his, another memory to be preserved. Being around beautiful immortals every day should have innoculated him, but here he was, desire and a strange echoing sadness twisting in his chest.

Jaehyun was beautiful, not only as all gods were.

*

"Do you think a kiss would cure it?" Jaehyun asked on the last night of October.

Youngho looked to the other side of the bed, sure that he misheard. "A what?"

A too-long pause, and Youngho knew he hadn’t. The bed dipped as Jaehyun shifted his weight. "A kiss."

Youngho studied Jaehyun’s face, his resolute stare at the ceiling. "Solving it with a fairy tale reckoning? No harm in trying." He tried to keep his tone light. "Right?"

"Right." A _snick_ of Jaehyun’s throat as he swallowed.

Youngho’s thoughts slurried ahead—Jaehyun’s mouth on his, hands in his hair. Jaehyun’s usual composure lost in the throes of pleasure. "Only if you’re alright with it."

"I am," said Jaehyun. Even in the dimness Youngho could see his cheeks darken. "And you?"

This might go on his list of horrendously bad ideas. _Fuck it._ It was one kiss. Youngho took his hand. "Come here."

Jaehyun turned onto his side, face unguarded in an aching vulnerability. His lips were petal pink. Youngho smiled, not daring to move, waiting for him to change his mind.

Jaehyun leaned over and kissed him. 

It felt good. More than good. Youngho was out of practice; their noses bumped together. Then he cupped the back of Jaehyun’s neck, and their lips slid together slowly, deliberately. Jaehyun’s fingers came up to fist on Youngho’s pajama front. He tumbled onto his back, Jaehyun resting on top of him. More than one kiss.

They drew back. The curse remained.

"It was worth a try," Jaehyun offered, rolling off him. His lips were red as his ears. He sounded breathless.

"It was," Youngho said, resisting the urge to touch his lips, do something stupid like draw Jaehyun close again. They drifted to their respective sides of the bed. 

*

The sunlight shone clean on Doyoung’s manor, casting the bricks in honey. Undaunted by the chill, songbirds frolicked in the fountains and twittered from the planters and roofs. The autumn foliage—aspens, moose maples, rare saplings Jaehyun would know but Youngho couldn’t name—crowded around in royal hues, dappling the lawn with shade.

None of it brought Youngho the usual peace today. 

November had brought a heavy wintry darkness that enveloped the earth until late morning. Renjun’s radiant horses shuffled rather than ran; Donghyuck’s avoided the spindly shadows. In the paltry harvest, people left their altars empty. The high king and queen refused to send aid because _surely, dear, Youngho has his own?_

"Where are your undead Qing musketeers?" Doyoung asked sarcastically after Youngho recounted letters, culminating in a the trip to the sky court. Mentioning the high king tended to sour his mood. "We all know you’re hiding them somewhere."

"Between you and me, I put them with the Vikings in my root cellar."

Snorting, Doyoung gathered another bunch of pine needles and disappeared into the forest.

On the terrace, Youngho willed ores into bells. Across from him, Yuta, the north wind, spelled the needles into fragrant ribbons to string them on. An army of demons had besieged a city nearby, some hack apothecary’s failed brew devouring a cobbler and his family across the street. Since the Fates hadn’t made the fatal snips, Youngho had retrieved their souls and sent them on their merry way. 

Which left them with rabid husks.

Dejun had found water-logged sketches from the fifth century, depicting household charms against ghouls. They found a glimmer of truth in the artist’s ramblings. One by one, a bird took a finished bell in its beak to bring into the city. 

"I never knew monsters were this intelligent," Yuta said, twisting another ribbon closed. "They’re building siege engines."

Youngho slid him another bell. "Some of them _did_ relish in eating their brains. Maybe the cobbler should have gone to study at Bologna instead of making shoes."

"What if he likes shoes," Yuta countered, wheedling him.

"What if he’s poor."

"What if demons simply enjoy eating brains."

Doyoung set the basket of pine needles down with a thunk _._ "What are you two squabbling about now?"

"Only about how muddy your house is," Yuta said airily. "I’m surprised you live in such hypocritical squalor."

"It rained last night," Doyoung deadpanned. A finch flapped down and perched on his wrist; he fed it a seed. "Unless you’re offering to clean it, I’ll be content to live slovenly for another hour or two."

Yuta smiled. "Actually, since I’ve been holding my breath for the past three months—" The sky grew dark; an ominous cloud blotted out the sun overhead. 

Youngho smothered his laughter in his sleeve, catching a trace of peach. Jaehyun must have borrowed this coat yesterday.

Doyoung jabbed Yuta’s sides until he surrendered, cackling. The cloud scudded away, and they finished another batch of charms. At his insistence, Doyoung huffed and tossed Yuta the pouch of feed. 

"Feel like helping me with the drakon?" Youngho asked. They watched Yuta float up to the shyer sparrows on the roof. In his billowing cloak, he looked like a overgrown bat. "It’s raining."

Doyoung gave him an unimpressed stare, but got on his feet. 

Outside the manor, the Mediterranean churned gray and dismal. Doyoung cast a dry sphere around them and their horses, the drakon hissing steam on the cart behind Youngho. Yukhei had stumbled upon it last night while chasing a vampire, a shard of a titan that would be returned to the river of fire.

"You seem happy," Doyoung said, steering his horse beside Youngho’s.

"What?"

"Happier," Doyoung amended. "I’ve known you since - what? Before you were crowned."

"Too long."

Ignoring him, Doyoung continued, "You’ve gotten quiet, over the years."

"Is that a bad thing?" Youngho wanted to squirm in his saddle, but Doyoung, on the bloodscent of something, would hone in on it. "It’s better than passing entire weeks drunk on my ass."

"No, it’s not a bad thing. I don’t miss dealing with your hangovers." 

"As I don’t miss dealing with your lovesick dalliances."

" _My_ \- so we’ve both changed." Doyoung cleared his throat. "And for the record, _this_ isn’t bad either. Jaehyun seems fond of you."

They really were talking about this. Youngho feigned nonchalance. "Half of the Mountain were falling over themselves to please him, if I recall. He makes people feel at ease. I’m no exception."

"But he isn’t _fond_ of just anyone."

Youngho wanted to believe him. That Youngho was special. He nudged his horse faster, his bravado scattering into the sand. "Is it wrong to find happiness in this disaster of a situation?"

"No." Doyoung’s voice held a frown. "You know as well as I do that the world can be destroyed in a day. You should take every crumb it gives you."

Wise words coming from him, who had pined for years and counting and bristled when the high king called Taeyong _his_ because it was false, and stayed false. Yet he said nothing, leading them across the sandbar to the wood, where a tip of the Styx curved behind a waterfall.

Jaehyun, bewitching, ash-haired, dressed in Youngho’s old felt coat that skimmed his knees, his shirt collar buttoned against the cold, grass and dirt staining the hem of his trousers. Jaehyun, lounging on his stomach in his pajamas. The sheen of the divine wrapped around him. The smell of peaches as they kissed. His smile, soft and open, accepting a red date from Youngho's hand. 

He didn't know what he wanted, hadn't peered into the roots of friendship and lust and burgeoning infatuation. He wanted to see his smile again. 

"It crept up on me," he said, around a mouthful of wrongness. Spring belonged in the sunlight, free and golden, not chained to the underworld.

"It crept up on me, too," said Doyoung.

Youngho whirled to look at him. "You’ve been admitting it so well. At this rate, you could confess before the end of the century."

"I'd rather perish before then, thanks."

"O’ great harbinger and healer of plagues, brought to heel by the lovely Taeyong from the sapphire lake—"

"Please no," Doyoung groaned.

"It would make a good ballad, set to a lyre," Youngho mused. "I’ll make a stop at the bards’ guild next, gift one with divine inspiration. Or better yet, tell Sooyoung."

"I’m leaving you in the rain."

"On second thought—"

"Youngho!"

His jaw struck the hard ground. He spat out damp sand. Saltwater soaked his hair. On his periphery, his horse bucked and whinnied, shrill with fear. 

"What _is_ this thing - I’m not—" A net strangled Youngho from neck to toe. Doyoung’s knife flashed in his hands, cutting to no avail. It was a living thing: ropes slashed his clothes, seared his skin.

"Who’s out there?" The net boiled, burned, snagging Doyoung by the fingers. He ripped them away, but the growth raced back, emboldened by their draining ichor.

Youngho shoved Doyoung away, cursing. "Go back, protect your people! There’s nothing you can do—"

"Like _hell_ there isn’t—"

With the last of his strength, he kicked Doyoung’s shoulder, forced his wild eyes to meet Youngho’s. Shadows emerged from the trees, muskets cocked. The net lapped eager at both their cut hands. "Go, Doyoung, go!"

Lightning forked the sky. Far away, doors were closing, the earth quaking, his realm reacting to his distress. A thought lurched forth: _at least the sceptre was returned._

He closed his eyes.

Doyoung remounted and whispered a word to their horses. They thundered away, faster than the wind.


	4. winter

Jaehyun heard the rumble as he sat on the riverbank.

It began on the horizon, a flock of geese taking to the sky above the marsh. Small ghostly animals scampered past. The reeds paused in their swaying. 

Then a distant roar, like a drumroll. The ground heaved; Jaehyun scrambled back to avoid pitching into the river. The sound swelled, thumps in his ribcage and the roof of his mouth, the Styx quivering, trees shedding dry leaves, birds cawing, raising the alarm.

An arrow whizzed inches from his nose. 

_Hurry,_ the land urged. Though the earth stilled, another force scuttled on the roads. _Trespassers._ Jaehyun ran, boots slipping over mud and twigs, avoiding roots by a steady guiding hand. Downstream, it led him. Back to the palace. 

The soldiers kept pace behind on horseback. Jaehyun dodged more arrows, noting the floral stench at their tips: they were here to kill a god. One pierced the meat of his calf. Cold pain bloomed. If only he had his powers, but there was no use wishing.

Jaehyun rounded the next bend, and the Styx tore open.

Curtains of water crashed over the soldiers’ ranks, tar-black and shining. The cavalry screamed, flailing from their horses, the water up to their waists, holding them there.

Jaehyun hurtled across the flagstones and shouted for the gates to close, drawing the shortsword Youngho had given him. The poison kicked in, weighing him down. He was barely fast enough. These were not the musketeers that hoped to overwhelm with numbers alone. _What am I doing here?_

The Styx bore a swarm of canoes. Heart tight with panic, Jaehyun saw Ten at the forefront. Yukhei barreled into shields with the strength of a bullmastiff. 

An axe winked high. 

And a curved blade deflected the brunt of the arc, tipping the soldier into the river.

"Never thought I’d see you fighting _with_ the underworld," Jungwoo called.

Jaehyun wiped his split upper lip. He had become complacent in his magic; red blood and golden ichor dripped into the water. "Is my mother—"

"She’s fine. Something _you_ clearly aren’t." Unerringly quick, Jungwoo felled a volley of arrows with a disc of water. Between the cypress, Kun raised cattails to shackle ankles. A shadow, capped with a lilypad, flooded the next line of soldiers.

"How did you—"

"Get back." 

And Jaehyun was on the other side of the gates, delirious, familiar pillars of marble ushering him in. On the front steps Youngho’s steward watched the horizon with crossed arms. Fred puddled at his feet, peeping out.

"Doyoung said you haven’t had your powers since you woke up." Cool fingers swept his bangs aside. Jungwoo glared down at him. "What were you thinking."

"I..." Jaehyun's calf felt wet but no longer cold. The arrow laid at his feet, drying on the tiles. "I wasn’t." 

"That’s clear enough," Ten said, gliding up the steps. "You look like death warmed over. Figures that Youngho would be out at a time like this."

A stone sank down Jaehyun’s stomach. "Have you—reached him?" 

"Not yet. Kun sent a messenger out." Ten turned to him. His eyes didn’t hold their usual teasing humor. "Is something wrong?"

"I don’t know. It’s..." Jaehyun closed his eyes. The rope between Youngho and him diminished with distance but was always solid. Not this limp ribbon. "The curse is telling me." 

After their morning coffee, Youngho had went to the surface, and Jaehyun whiled away the hours in the groves. When the trees’ language—no longer mutters, at least—clumped together in nonsensical knots, he sought respite by the stream.

A reaper led the soldiers, enthralled and obedient, into the courtyard.

Kun came up the steps and held out a flask to Jaehyun. "Antidote for the belladonna. Can you walk?"

Jaehyun nodded, muzzy-eyed.

"Keep it close for now."

Ten perched on the armrest beside Jungwoo, who burrowed into Jaehyun’s side. "You’re a river god, right?" Ten asked. "That’s how you got in?" 

Jungwoo nodded, looking curiously upon them, then back at Jaehyun. "The Styx let me pass. Some of the others tried, but they couldn't."

"My messenger came back as well," Kun said. "Nobody can get out—all the entrances to the underworld are sealed." He exchanged a grim glance with Ten. "The magic is invoked when the king of death is in danger."

*

"Please," said the captain, a stout man with flaxen hair. A blacksmith or butcher, Jaehyun pictured. "They said I could bring back my wife." He pointed to the man next to him. "His brother." Another: "Her father." A shared breath through their ranks— _my son, my daughter, halmeoni, ge_.

"The third god of death had a rebellion of dead souls," Kun said softly, recanting the story Youngho had told Jaehyun. "The ones that escape make abominations if they fuse with the living."

He and Jungwoo and Jaehyun sat in the vacant mezzanine above the throne hall. Courtesy of Jungwoo, their robes were already dry. 

Below, Ten and the underworld nobility surveyed the mortals. Those that hadn’t wet themselves gaped at the painted ceilings, the splendor.

"So the closings are a safeguard," said Jungwoo.

"Yes." Another tremor juddered the earth. Mortal and god alike flinched. "Unfortunately, the souls aren’t the problem this time." 

"Was the belladonna clumsily made like the poppy wine?" Jaehyun asked.

"No, it’s nothing special, good or bad." Kun frowned down at the arrow in his hands. It was an ordinary yew shaft tipped with hen feathers, far from those of the hunt or love courts. "Meaning, it would’ve been effective if it struck your head or heart."

Jungwoo winced. Discreetly, Jaehyun glanced down, and saw that his calf was steaming closed. He had healed aspens thousands of years old and summoned prized rosebushes back to life but never himself. The gift of spring reached out, not in.

He said nothing.

"Which begs the question of _who_ gave it to them and found skilled archers in this gunpowder age." Kun glanced sidelong at him. "With the resources and the forces, someone can manage it." 

Jaehyun hesitated. "Why learn a skill when you can hire people to do it for you?"

"That’s certainly the philosophy for some," Kun said, flashing a thin smile. "The cattle will thank them."

 _He suspects too._ The sky king’s foibles with the finer aspects of divinity had reached underworld ears.

"And who promised you all such a thing?" the goddess of sleep was demanding below.

"I cannot—" the captain clawed at his neck. 

"Typical," Jungwoo sighed.

Ten stepped forward. "Nod or shake your head. Hair like this?" He pointed at his own blond hair. 

The captain squirmed. 

"Or this?" He pointed at Yukhei’s dark locks.

The captain squirmed some more.

Ten looked up at them on the mezzanine and shrugged. _I tried._

The captain slumped to his knees, shrinking into himself. None of the mortals were wounded beyond bruises and wet clothes. "I suppose I cannot rescue my dear wife. Or any of them."

The goddess of sleep scowled. "There was nothing to rescue them from _._ If the Fates deem it, you’ll meet again someday."

"Death is evil." 

"Death is a part of life. Not that you’ll remember this, but if a too-beautiful person offers you something too good to be true in the future, it’s best to not trust them."

The captain bawled, and the assembly watched in silence. They carried flickering lanterns that scarcely pushed into the darkness, lending the room the air of a tomb; the chandeliers overhead had curled into themselves and refused to respond. On the dais, the throne sat empty.

On the back row, an archer slid a decanter from his rucksack. The liquid inside glowed as molten lava.

"Down—"

Jungwoo sprang over the railing. Fred was ahead of him, wrestling soldier and cork to the floor. Too late.

The mortals screamed and ducked. Jungwoo sprang up. He and Yukhei sprinted out the hall. A trail of pumice clattered in the fire demon’s wake. 

Kun tugged on Jaehyun’s sleeve, and they were dashing through the velvet curtains and down a side staircase.

"Do you know what it’s looking for?" Kun managed. He ripped a door open and looked back, stopping short. "Jaehyun, your leg." 

"It’s alright." The land clanged, louder than before. Hot stripes stamped his arms and legs, the weariness from dissipating. _This way._ Pictures burst forth. Branches in a vase, roots snaking down a plinth into the earth below. "Kun, is there a tree inside the palace?"

Kun smacked his forehead. "The poplar. The displays rotate around. I don’t recall where—"

"I can find it," Jaehyun said. The groves beckoned. He and Kun flew past the the passage to the baths. A stickiness followed his movements. _Don’t control me again,_ he fought against the puppet strings. _We can work together._

_This way, this way—_

_Tell me, don’t pull me._

Pomegranate seeds sour-sweet in his mouth. _We only want to be heard._

_As do I._

A warm agreement draped his shoulders. Branches lengthened and budded. They showed him a tapestry to duck behind, let him run down a dusty corridor with his own strength. A lemur with amethyst eyes. Alabaster dolphins froze mid-leap.

Flames engulfed a poplar tree.

The demon was pounding its fists in triumph. At the sight of Jaehyun and Kun, it stamped its sooty feet and giggled louder, evading Jason’s jaws. Gold melted on shattered bits of porcelain.

Jaehyun fenced in the wreckage with river stones. At the far end of the hall, Yukhei and Jungwoo emerged with a slew of guards, panting. 

Arms at his side, clover in his fist, Kun sang for rain.

  
  


*

  
  


In varying states of dryness, they settled in the kitchens, the cool stone welcoming where the heat of the blaze faded. The barrels offered a strange assortment of food—peas and dill and wild cherries, out of season. The pewter pot for coffee actually worked on its own accord, but Jaehyun opened the lid and found chicken bones simmering inside. The palace knew its king was missing.

Yukhei found mushrooms under an cake bell, and Jaehyun set to slicing them. Kun was salvaging the bone broth for soup. In the throne room, the guards attempted to feed the soldiers, who cowered under the myth that all underworld sustenance was binding. 

"Are we not going to talk about _Styx_ lifting a finger to help you?" Ten nudged Jaehyun. "You’ve earned your place with the rest of us goblins of the underworld."

"Have I?" The Styx's nymphs, the eyes that had watched him from afar, had saved Jaehyun from being riddled with poison-tipped arrows. Did the trees call them, or had they been watching? "So has Jungwoo, it seems like."

"That’s different," Jungwoo protested sleepily from a footstool. "I’m a river. Like calls to like."

"And like calls to invasive species of spring gods, it seems like," Ten said, grinning. "They’re supposed to be ancient and uncaring, but somehow they protected you."

Jaehyun considered the groves, the magic sleeping under his skin. Youngho’s laughter, the plushness of his mouth on his. None of it felt like a curse sometimes. "Maybe."

Messengers staggered in from the snowy night. They bore identical tidings: the partial burning of the poplar, the guardian lock, meant not even a river or a reaper could exit. It waited for no one but its king. Beyond, in the gaps in the rocks, blizzards smothered half the world; summer scorched the other. The west wind retreated to his cave. The other gods either retreated or rushed to quell the nightcrawlers.

A vast crust of earth separated Jaehyun and Youngho. _Not dead,_ Jaehyun thought. _I would feel it if he were dead._

Jaehyun kept hacking and dicing, afraid that if he stopped, he was lost.

*

A night, then a day, then a night. The headache didn’t come. Not wanting to broach Youngho’s chambers alone, Jaehyun returned to his old bed, Jungwoo taking the guest room across the hall. By day Jaehyun sought solace in the groves, taking a dipper to the Styx and sprinkling water on the roots. The pair of persimmons at the entrance rattled a greeting. The straggly bitter orange bowed under fragrant fruit. The pomegranate at the center bent its boughs for Jaehyun to climb on.

In his dreams another body slumbered beside him. Strong arms cocooned him, slung over his waist, holding Jaehyun as he’d burned to be held all these months. Their bare calves touched. Lips brushed his nape, a suggestion of things to come.

When he woke, the lake had frozen over.

 _Youngho_. The syllables notched in his throat. Though the dream was innocent, Jaehyun flushed with guilt.

*

The nobles, taking shifts wrangling the mortals, mixed drinks downstairs. Snippets swung between _our king has forsaken us_ to _we can go ice-skating early this year._ When Jaehyun strode by, dressed for the groves, they didn’t upbraid him, as he’d expected.

Instead, they buzzed with good wishes, pressing perfumed invitations for tea and sleigh rides into his hands. Every court had its teeth, but theirs weren’t razor sharp. They laughed freely with each other and traded gossip for entertainment, mingling in a swirl of dark satins. He had not known it could be different.

Ten rescued him from a ferryman harping on _when’s the wedding?_ and, smirking at Jaehyun’s red ears, shepherded him out into the morning.

"They take to any novelty, you know. Don’t mind them." Ten ducked into the stables. The unraveling was here, too—mud spattered over the immaculate flagstones and froze. Horses shuffled their feet, restless.

"I won’t." Jaehyun squinted at the smudge on the horizon. The groves called. "Did you actually need something, or were you just stopping by?"

"Excuse you," Ten sniffed. "I’ve found something important." 

"What is it?"

"It’s a surprise." Jaehyun caught his eye, and was struck by the solemnity there. "I already called Jungwoo. Come on."

They rode west, up the slushy road to Elysium. Without bodies to collect, reapers prowled the woods like mournful herons, feathers on their broad-brimmed hats the sole streaks of color. Jaehyun, taking pity on Jaemin and his confinement, let him nestle in his coat as a overfluffed dog. He was a silent warmth as Ten and Jungwoo cracked jokes at the front. Jungwoo had taken their entrapment in stride, lilting out greetings to every river and brook they crossed.

On the hills, spring flourished eternal. Jungwoo dismounted and peeked through the wrought-iron bars. "Is it always like this?"

"Sadly," said Ten. "I’m surprised it doesn’t get boring. Then again, heroes _are_ boring. Always dying for glory and such."

Jaehyun remained behind, stunned at a tree outside the fence. Branches spread as a verdant cloud at midsummer, laden with dates, small and unripe. Feathery leaves fluttered above the finials.

It had not been here before.

Ten slunk up beside him, studying his reaction. Jungwoo’s lips parted in an _o_. "I thought your powers were..."

Jaehyun reached out, pinching a leaf. "That’s what I thought, too." But that wasn’t the whole truth; his sense of the earth had been trickling back in dribbles and drops. Dribbles and drops that collected to a decent-sized pond.

He turned to Jaemin. If what he’d known about the archers of love were true, it should be easy for him. "Could you see if there’s spring magic inside?"

Jaemin cocked his head, then leapt onto a branch, sniffing the trunk. Eyes bright, he nodded.

Jaehyun concentrated on the leaf between his fingers. The tree breathed in, then out. The others were silent, watching him. "This didn’t grow on its own."

Ten snorted. " _I_ could have told you that. The real question is, could you do it for another tree?"

*

Stripped of its gold, the poplar tree was unassuming, bark ridged in gray. A model in miniature, no taller than twice his height. It gave the same cadence as the groves, but the notes were sour, twisted in hurt. Every rumble of the earth sent it shrinking away

Jaehyun had seen worse. He should have done it in his sleep. Yet here he was, spending hours frowning at one square inch of bark, floundering in the tide.

*

He saw him this time, his face stippled in the shadow of a palm frond. They were on an unknown beach before a dream ocean under a china-blue sky. It was natural for Jaehyun to step into his arms, bury his nose in the crook of his neck.

"You smell nice," Jaehyun said.

Youngho’s hand skimmed the small of his back. "So do you."

Youngho kissed him, and Jaehyun kissed back willingly. There was a heat to their movements this time, teeth and tongue, well-versed hands roaming under shirts. _Let me have this,_ he willed the gathering fog. _Let me stay for a moment longer._

The dream sharpened. The grit of sand on his toes. Eyelashes. 

Jaehyun laced their fingers together. 

"You were never this bold," Youngho said, voice clear. "My imagination has no bounds."

"You haven’t learned enough about me, then."

"I wanted to know you better."

"But I’m real," Jaehyun said. Youngho maneuvered them to sit on the sun-warmed rocks, and Jaehyun, untethered to his waking restraints, whined at the loss of contact.

Youngho laughed. His eyes mapped Jaehyun out as if he would never see him again. They were the same lovely shade of brown Jaehyun had admired furtively and didn’t know how to compliment without revealing too much. "That’s what all dreams want you to think."

"Not true," said Jaehyun. "Can’t you enjoy a dream even though you know it’s not real?"

Youngho cupped his jaw, looking bitter. In a heart-stopping motion, he brushed the stray hairs from Jaehyun's eyes and pressed a lingering kiss to his lips. "Not this one. You’re haunting me for all my failures." 

—Jaehyun was falling up through soil and leaf in one dizzying lurch to the top of a mountain, sunlight bright enough to lance. Cuts appeared on Youngho’s face. Shadows crouched under his eyes. Sweat and metal overtook the scent of crushed olives, soap. Real.

" _You_ —"

*

"There." Ten shut the lid with a thump. "Your very own handcrafted box of dreams. You’re welcome."

Jaehyun eyed the carved verses of dead languages. The cube was no bigger around than a lampshade. On one face, a gate of horn. On the other, a gate of ivory. "Thank you. Are you sure it’ll work?"

"Normally, he would need his own answering box. But if what you saw was true..." Ten waved a hand. "Ancient magic. Buyer’s satisfaction, guaranteed."

Kun snorted. A kerchief bound his pale hair before a bubbling cauldron. "You sound like a sleazy merchant selling cough syrup."

"Sleazy merchants happen to get rich quicker."

"What do you need to be rich for. We’re gods."

"You’re right, but for a different reason. I have _you_ ," said Ten, blowing him a kiss. Kun grimaced, pretending to bat it away.

The box's contents included a river stone, an incense cone, Youngho’s cufflinks, and a dried rose, to which Ten whispered conspirationally, "Dream sex is quite the unique experience."

Jaehyun took the box to the groves with him, unfolding a quilt on a dry spot and lighting the wick atop the lid to fall asleep. Blankness. It was daytime in the underworld; wherever Youngho was, he might not be asleep. Jaehyun shoved down his fear and frustration and strained to morph a pile of petals instead.

 _You only have to ask,_ the pomegranate tree clacked above him, glimpsing the basket he envisioned.

 _I know._ A drip of magic, and another, used up as soon as he found them. It had been too long since he'd spoken to plants, and he was careful not to disturb the fragile balance. _Except I have to learn it for myself, don’t I._

Deep in the roots, a rumble of acknowledgement. 

_Someone taught us long ago,_ an orange tree piped up. _The same goddess who made us._

_I’m listening._

_Do not fight it._

"Easier said than done," Jaehyun muttered through his teeth, breaking into a sweat. If he could master his gift, he could heal the poplar. If he could heal the poplar, he could find Youngho. The underworld would let him out, surely.

The petals smoked and shook, melding into a shiny layer of acrylic before falling apart. His ichor came when he called to it but was not the same. He was too heavy to float.

Jaehyun relinquished the stream, sagging against the pomegranate trunk. _Any other hints?_

The trees rustled, but their murmurs were amongst themselves, not for Jaehyun. He closed his eyes. The usual rocks and critters were sprinkled in the earth. There was more: dead leaves, fermenting fruit, the moist compost of dead things that were once alive. Bathed in nutrients, onions, rutabaga, potatoes ballooned.

_Death is not the opposite of spring._

Standing, Jaehyun scooped the decay onto the petals and poured his ichor into the mixture. The drips became a creek, widening. He waded in.

Jaehyun had clutched the shorn end of a string. He let it go now, let it sink into the loamy black earth and bear his intent aloft. One ear in the realm, one ear in his body, Jaehyun felt as Youngho felt. Courtiers dancing in their slippers. Reapers pacing in their boots, impatient to resume work. Jungwoo sparring with Yukhei in the snow. Libations from the surface—lamb’s blood, strawberry wine—dripped down stalactites and flowed from the seas, prayers for the monstrous season to cease.

The afternoons Jaehyun sat at the bottom of his mother’s pond and looked through the emerald screen of lilypads. Algae, duckweed, detritus.

Jaheyun opened his eyes.

The guards at the entrance were running toward him, faces scrunched against the green glare. 

Around him, a field of mint laid in a perfect ring. His body burned. The marks were absent from his skin, and he thought he understood: he had claimed the trees as they’d claimed him. There was no need for that now.

For this, Jaehyun’s head dipped under the weight of a crown.

*

"I leave you alone and you become a king," Jungwoo bemoaned.

"Trust me, I didn’t ask for this." Jaehyun clunked his head on the wall behind him, glad to be free of the weight. A fervor gripped the underworld, each resident deity bound for an instant by a glade of spring. When Jaehyun emerged from the groves, silver clinging to his scalp, the news spread like wildfire.

"You usurped an entire kingdom without even—sorry," Jungwoo cut off his jape, noting Jaehyun’s expression.

"No, it’s alright. I’m only—" Jaehyun rubbed his forehead. "Worried."

Jungwoo threw his arms around Jaehyun’s shoulders. In the stale air of the armory, his clean scent, redolent of mountain streams, eased the vice around Jaehyun’s chest.

Youngho’s own crown, in its locked case, also gleamed of silver and onyx. While it had a different pattern of laurels and lacked the shot of brambles that harkened to the harvest court, the two were clearly a set. King and consort. King and king. He tried not to dwell on either.

"They’re pledging to you, you know," Jungwoo said, drawing back. "They view you as temporary regent, at least. Until Youngho comes back."

Jaehyun didn’t have to ask who. Two floors above the dining hall, the muffled din of conversation was audible. _Handpicked by the five rivers and the three trees,_ a god had declared to enthusiastic applause at supper. He imagined those bright faces turned to anger. "They want a convenient scapegoat for when things go from bad to worse."

"Don’t be pessimistic. It can’t get _that_ much worse."

"Famous last words, Woo."

Blowing an exasperated breath, Jungwoo steered Jaehyun to the window, swinging the panes open. "Listen."

The night streamed in, trees rustling in the breeze. Jaehyun’s razor-sharp sense of the land dwindled with each passing hour, but the night remained quiet to his own ears.

"The quakes have already stopped," Jungwoo said. "People have been watching since you walked out of there."

"It could be—" 

"Before you say it’s a coincidence," Jungwoo interrupted. "That poplar has regrown twigs. And Ten says another date tree had sprung up right next to the first one. Ride out and see for yourself."

Jaehyun stared at him. 

"Take your time. It’s hard to argue when I hold the facts."

Jaehyun startled himself with a bark of laughter. If Jungwoo harbored resentment at being stuck down here, he didn’t show it. He trusted in Jaehyun’s ability. It was Jaehyun that had to keep moving. 

He replaced the latch. "You should have been king instead."

"You’re right, I should have." Jungwoo’s grin split his cheeks. "But they chose you instead, so bear it for me."

  
  


*

  
  


They were in the same sunlit room that he saw now was a cell. 

"You’re real," Youngho said, lifting tired eyes. He looked like a parched man stumbling upon an oasis, not daring to believe. Jaehyun wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him and assure him that he was very much real. _Focus_. 

The floor was swept clean. Jaehyun sat down before him. "Where are you?"

"The Mountain."

"We were right, then."

Youngho looked and looked, drinking Jaehyun in. He balled his hands into fists, chains clanking, and drew in a shaky breath.

Jaehyun hobbled on his knees toward him, grasping his shirtfront. "Youngho, I’m real. Ten made me one of his boxes. The curse—those trees—they’re linking us somehow."

Youngho held Jaehyun’s wrists, brands on his skin. "I thought you were dead. Even though..." He tapped his temple. "They had your body on a bier and everything."

"Mirror magic?"

"Anything from necromancy to a sculpted chunk of a giant’s ass."

"That’s disturbing."

"I know."

Jaehyun drew closer, and Youngho dropped his head to his shoulder. Everything was clear, as Ten had promised. Strands of his hair tickled Jaehyun’s cheek. The golden bars shone.

"They tried, and must have thought they succeeded," Jaehyun said, tottering under Youngho’s weight. He didn’t let go. "All the doors to the underworld are closed."

Youngho let go of his wrists in alarm. "Someone tried to _kill_ you?"

"Tried. It’s that—we can’t get out," said Jaehyun, then sat back, explaining the string of events. The mortals, the demon, the poplar, the red date. His coronation. Youngho’s eyes were wide. 

The dream changed as he willed it. A room opened to a dense forest. Mauve wallpaper spanned the walls, inlaid with tiny coiling vines and birds. An oval mirror in one corner. Wisteria had long hidden the scorch marks.

"If the trees crowned you, it’s as legitimate as any death god," Youngho said, chainless, digesting Jaehyun’s words. He looked at their surroundings. "Where are we?"

"My room."

Youngho took a turn around the space, almost tripping over a potted fern. At the vanity, he pointed at the open sketchbook. "Is this supposed to be a _vase_?"

Jaehyun groaned, covering his face. "The less you know, the better."

Laughing, Youngho sat down beside Jaehyun at the foot of his old bed. He was halfway embarrassed at the hazy kisses they’d exchanged in dreams past, the drowsy afterglow, but neither of them mentioned it. The silence eased him. He wanted to tug Youngho outside and show him the grounds.

Instead, Jaehyun forged on. "Do you know who’s holding you?"

"The high king," said Youngho, matter-of-fact. "He’s helming the inquisition into an underworld conspiracy for a murder."

"Mine?" 

"Yours."

Jaehyun let out a breath. He had been bracing for it, but realizing he was a pawn in the _high king’s_ games was unsettling, to say the least. "Then the whole business with Somin planting the sceptre..." 

"A lie to catch me in."

If an arrow _had_ killed Jaehyun, the other gods would have had free reign to raid the underworld, claiming to hold the torch of justice whilst chancing upon the sceptre professed to be lost. It would have been a final nail in the coffin. "They’re blaming an assumption on you."

Youngho nodded. "The sky king is losing a war up north against the sea queen’s tsar. He needs the harvest court’s stores to feed his army."

"So he built up their resentment against you and glued my father at his side," Jaehyun finished hollowly. He and his father had no real love, but there’d been a certain comfort, a mutual trust, between their magicks. "And the high queen?"

Youngho frowned, gnawing at his lip. "I don’t know. She seemed genuinely surprised when they brought me out. But her husband’s been whispering in her ear while I’m stuck in my cell."

"And my father thinks I’m dead?"

"He’s vowed vengeance. The flaming pits of hell kind."

"What about Doyoung? Taeil?" Jaehyun turned to face him. "They would vouch for you. How could I spend months in your care and you suddenly decide to murder me? It doesn’t make sense."

Youngho gave him a small, humorless smile. "It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s the high king’s words against theirs—they’ve been banned for their quote-unquote _disturbances_ at the primeval court. And now he has an undead army to fight for him."

"Wouldn’t his enemies be undead as well?"

"Probably. The war rages on. Kunhang managed to signal to me that its goddess joined the alliance yesterday."

Pulse hammering, Jaehyun picked at a stray thread on his sleeve. Years ago, the goddess of wisdom had declared for the sea at the start of a long and bitter war. With War and Harvest, the sky king inverted the scales. "How much longer?"

"The inquisition? A week, maybe," said Youngho. "His royal highness wants it to be a grand spectacle."

"Are you in pain?"

"No." His mouth twitched. "I could have used a change of scenery, so thanks."

"Glad I could provide." Already the dream was blurring at the edges, mirror ground to dust, mattress teetering beneath them. The lemon tree beyond perfumed the air stronger than he remembered. Jaehyun mustered up his own smile.

"Keep the realm together for me," Youngho said. He touched Jaehyun’s chin, tilting it up a fraction. Another brand. His eyes flickered to Jaehyun’s lips. "Whatever happens."

"—I can heal it," Jaehyun blurted. Far away, a leaf fell on the back of his mind. Agreeing. "Knowing Doyoung, he hasn’t given up, either." 

"He should, for his own sake."

"Be quiet," Jaehyun murmured, without malice.

"When did you become such a brat?" Youngho laughed again, softer. "I meant what I said—I would’ve liked to know you better. Not as death and spring. Or as death and spring but ourselves."

 _Oh._ Before Jaehyun could cave in to fear, bury his vulnerability, the words tumbled forth: "I feel the same."

Potted plants frittering to ash. Cracks splintering the mirror.

And Jaehyun saw it now—the want. The affection. Youngho did not taken pains to hide any of it. He was unabashed, unashamed, and a new heat shuddered up Jaehyun’s spine. To be wanted as much as Jaehyun wanted him.

At the end of the road, his room emerged in darkness.

*

It felt like walking on stilts, but he built a fresh layer of bark for the poplar. The trees were back to their arcane babble. In his mind a zither trilled if he did well. Twigs snapped if he did not. Diamonds, fished from lodes deep in the earth, budded on branches and coated them in armor. 

The underworld nobles made excuses—a mug of tea, an introduction to a distant relative—to walk the hall often, eager to see his progress. They pinned mint sprigs to their lapels as a mark of unity. He went to see Asphodel, steadying the slurry of souls, and checked on the bakery where Youngho had buried the sceptre. The crown dropped on his head at importune times until he got the message to wear it always.

"Is your neck fit to snapping yet?" Jungwoo asked, a picture of innocence. He was spooning puréed cucumber, nearly rotted, onto the poplar’s roots. After the tree had seen Jaehyun’s crown and deemed them safe, it wrapped them around its metaphorical finger.

"Would you ask Youngho the same thing?" Jaehyun deadpanned.

"No, because he’s not my friend." Jungwoo smiled brightly. "Yet."

"I look forward to that day," said Ten. He squatted below the marble lemur, polishing the scrollwork. That morning, they’d peeked into the dreambox and he’d sighed at the rose’s intact state. "Now that I think about it, the harvest god is probably screwing your stepmother six ways to Sunday to make a fresh babe of spring."

Jaehyun made a face. "Let’s not think about it."

"I can’t help how my prurient mind works. It’s better than repression, I would think."

"Was that a pointed statement?"

"Only if the shoe fits," Ten said. "Kun and I have always dubbed Youngho’s trousers as the throne of dust because of the lack of action they see."

"Good to know," Jaehyun managed, focusing back on the poplar. With gusto, the poplar drained the treat and held out another singed branch to heal. "Any better?"

Jungwoo soaked his hand in a basin of water, listening to the Styx. "It seems to be trickling down near the Seine again." He submerged his other hand. "And...the delta of the Pearl. We could actually see if the world’s alive up there." 

By evening, the poplar shone under a film of diamond dust. Kun and the goddess of sleep arrived with a fortified container, to much rejoice. In the kitchens, things were back in order: teacakes appeared, topped with sugared violets. Grubby windows wiped themselves clean; toasts echoed in the halls to their kings—both of them. The underworld’s exits opened in fits and starts, enough for rivers to slip out. Furtively, as crowds camped outside each grotto.

Back in his room, the peonies pinkened with a snap of his fingers. Jaehyun's veins brimmed with magic, recognizable as his own but different. Louder. Colder. He lit the candle atop the dream box and wearily flopped down on his bed. _Not yet,_ he whispered to the groves, who were a snip away from releasing him. A scout had located Doyoung and Taeyong, who, true to the high king’s orders, couldn’t pass a mile within Hallasan, the current Mountain. Clamors about Death on trial, Harvest in mourning.

*

Youngho was alive, still. Fear and frustration and something akin to love choked Jaehyun’s throat.

"It's only been a day but I've missed you," Youngho said.

Jaehyun felt his ears grow hot.

He told him of the poplar and the quakes. Youngho told him of the trial, the sky king trotting out the ocean’s border with the Styx as a hotbed for schemes, proferring sirens and swamp deities Youngho had never seen before to testify. On a sheet of paper, he sketched the layout of the cells, the castle. He jotted down the weapons the guards had, the location of the windows and the wells. Since they were sealed off from the world, they could only guess what waited beyond.

They sat on a spire of glass, a summer wind whipping their cheeks. The sun glowed orange over the hills. Youngho loosely covered Jaehyun’s hand with his own, a question. Jaehyun answered by turning his palm over and squeezing their hands together, taking comfort where he could.

"You think they’ll let you go this time?" Youngho asked at last, leaning over the balcony.

Jaehyun watched him, his fringe mussed and falling over his forehead. He did not need to explain, not to him. "I know it."

Youngho swung their arms wide, smiling faintly. "On behalf of the underworld, I apologize for everything we’ve done. The trees have no manners."

Jaehyun elbowed him half-heartedly. " _I_ should be the one apologizing. For involving you. For all that the harvest court has slandered you with."

"We are not our parents. It isn’t your fault."

"It isn't yours, either."

"...A truce, then." Youngho turned, eyes dark with intent. His other hand grazed Jaehyun’s waist, asking once more. 

Heart full, Jaehyun looped his clammy hands around his neck. He pulled Youngho down, the distance between them simultaneously scant and immeasurable, kissing him hard as the dream crumpled around them. 

*

"I’ll be back," Jaehyun told Jason. 

The snake remained unconvinced, clamping down on his sleeve.

"I will," Jaehyun tried again. One arm free, he shouldered his pack, glancing around the room. He pushed the peonies toward Jason. "See? I’m leaving this here. And my crown. And my pajamas." He pointed at the dresser.

Jason glared sullenly.

Jaehyun lifted his other arm, a dead weight of stubborn python attached, and undid the pin of his left earring. "If you let go, you can hold this for me. Deal?"

Jason relented, releasing his jaws. Jaehyun laid the stud next to the peonies, where the snakes could nose at it. Satisfied, Jason hissed a farewell and vanished back into the bowels of the palace.

Rosy dawn limned the underworld, which meant night covered this exit. Lookouts swarmed the riverbend closest to Hallasan, so they had chosen a point across the sea.

"It’ll be cold," said Kun. He rowed a canoe with Jaehyun. The flex of his oars was sure and measured against the current. Jungwoo misted in the water, navigating ahead of them.

"As you’ve said," said Jaehyun, smiling under his scarf. In his room he’d practiced summoning plants from pinches of soil, flowers to belch hot gas. It was wobbly work; he wore a coat under this cloak. He’d filched both from Youngho’s wardrobe.

"Sorry." Kun shot him a sheepish grin that let Jaehyun know he wasn’t sorry at all. "You’re one of us now, like it or not. You've been for some time."

"I know." Jaehyun tried to not buckle with gratitude. Him, attached to the underworld, promising a serpent to return, bounding off to save its king. If only his father could see him now. _He would, soon enough._

Ten waited at the rocks. A band of grim reapers stood beside him, faces shadowed with anticipation. He handed Jaehyun the reins of the stallion and raised a brow. "You’re going to try to talk to them first?"

"I should at least see who they serve. Anyone can wear sky blue."

Harumping, Ten nocked an arrow on his bow. "Alright. Eavesdropping it is." He kicked Jaehyun’s ankle. "Safe travels."

Jaehyun led the stallion into the mouth of the grotto, steps crunching ice as they took the turns up and neared the surface. A step, then another. No invisible force slammed him back. The temperature plummeted. He reached out a mental tendril, craning, and the poplar replied.

The rock face slid open to a landscape alien under the moonlight. Though the night was clear, snow smothered every field and tree. A line of muskets bristled forth.

"Jaehyun!"

The god of wine, the high king and queen’s firstborn, pushed through the soldiers, hair slicked against his skull. The stallion whinnied in unease.

"What are you doing here?" asked Jaehyun, feigning bewilderment. "People have been looking for you."

"Biding my time. You can’t trust anyone in this century." The wine god swiveled to look at the cave behind him, remarks of _lucky guess_ and _bone sage_ under his breath. "I trust you, though, of course. You’ve escaped?"

"Something of the sort," Jaehyun lied, schooling his features to winded, starry-eyed relief. He surged forward, leading them away from the cave. "Heesang, is it true? Your father has caught the god of death?"

"Yes. He can't hurt you anymore." The wine god straightened, smiling in a way that Jaehyun had once considered dashing. Now, he resembled an earl overfond of leisure, pasty as the snow around them. "And your father has joined our side. We’ll deliver a resounding victory over the sea queen in a year’s time. Perhaps even less."

"I’m—glad."

"I know you are." The wine god extended a hand, snow sprinkled on his mink coat. "Come, friend of spring. You’re safe, now." A carriage emerged from a tent, helmed with winged deities. "We’ll see you home."

In one motion, Jaehyun pulled himself up the stallion, sliding his feet into the stirrups. "I’ll prefer to ride, lord of wine."

"Nonsense," he said. The soldiers inched closer. "You’ll freeze to death and it will fall to me to thaw you out." He winked. "Unless you wish it so."

"I wish to see the king’s trial at your esteemed sky court," Jaehyun said, lowering his eyes in faux hesitance. "You need only to escort me up there, and I’ll be done troubling you after that. You must be busy, being of the Mountain."

"Ah, but I’m never busy for _you_ ," the wine god said, flattered. He opened the carriage door, revealing a ornate velvet interior. "I insist."

"I’ll have to pass," Jaehyun said.

A perfect set of teeth glinted. "It is comfortable, I assure you. My father has commissioned the best."

"By all means, you can still use it for yourself," said Jaehyun, politely. He drew up his hood. "I’ll wait for you at the gorge."

To his credit, the wine god kept his composure, reaching behind him. For his staff, or for a potion, Jaehyun did not deign to find out. "In that case—"

Jaehyun tapped the horse’s side. The stallion sprung into motion, dashing the short sprint to leap over the carriage, gods and mortals crying out, falling back. Shots rang out. Two passed clean through the horse’s flank. They were sparse in number; the majority of their force was elsewhere. Jungwoo, partnered with the newly freed river, lashed out waves. 

Jaehyun shouted to the poplar down their link, hoping the rock would close. Ten would be waiting if it did not. Trust the god of wine to not question the details of Jaehyun’s miraculous escape. 

The stallion galloped forth.

Jaehyun willed snowdrops into existence, hiding them in the nooks of logs and tufts of dead grass, not daring to signal to the sky in case the high queen was, in fact, set against Youngho and watching. At the cusp of the forest, he released his ragged horse. A pat of its snout, and it went to smoke, returning to the underworld. 

He kept running. Snow blanketed the land in pristine silence, punctured by his breaths. Around him, the pines shivered awake.

"I sensed something, get closer."

"Fine, but don’t blame me if you get knocked out by branch—"

"Not so _fast_ , they can’t smell—" 

A cloud passed overhead. Yuta, the north wind, whooped. Taeyong clung to the frosted sides with three of his doves, looking queasy. 

They scooped Jaehyun up in a flurry of ice, wind stinging his eyes and cheeks. A lurid joy tore a grin from his lips. He stared at them and they stared back.

"See? It’s fantastic," Yuta said, steering them higher.

Taeyong sighed. "I suppose." His doves darted off, snowdrops clutched in their beaks. 

They soared higher, teeth chattering. Jaehyun took out a packet of underworld dirt. He took a handful and, leaning in, raised a bromeliad in the cup of his palms.

Taeyong blinked in surprise. He held his hands to the shimmering heat. "Can I?"

Jaehyun nodded.

With a gesture, Taeyong added leaves to the creation. The waxen furls encased the central bloom, seamless from the original magic. Then he reached over and wrapped his arms around Jaehyun, prodding his numb cheeks as if to make sure that he was there. 

"It’s been a while," Jaehyun said, chilled to the bone, ignoring the yawning emptiness where the link to Youngho had been.

"It has," Taeyong agreed. He sat back, giving him space. "Tell us all the details later."

"I will."

At this altitude, the air thinned to mortal limits. Hamlets and woods shrank beneath them, toys in a god’s palm. Stars strewn across the firmament.

The dead of winter stretched out, endless.


	5. midwinter

If someone had asked Youngho where he saw himself in a year, he would have said _the same old._ He bore the duties of death well; the underworld, once alarmed at his young age, entrusted him with their kingdom. The wheel of death and rebirth molded to his hands; mortals were interesting enough. Souls were more interesting still. 

Nothing like the monotony of imprisonment to make him appreciate what he had.

"Are you prepared to confess today?" the high king drawled. He pulled a quill from thin air and tapped it against his goatee.

"I am," said Youngho, dully repeating his daily mantra. "I confess I’ve done nothing wrong. I confess to leaving socks on the floor. I confess to sheltering Jaehyun when he could not leave the underworld."

"Then you do not have a tight control over your subordinates," the king said. "They festered hidden jealousies over the god of spring’s powers, which ended in tragedy. I loved him as my own."

Youngho boiled at the faux wetness in his eyes. _Calm yourself._ He and Jaehyun had agreed to keep his living status a secret until the last, giving the sky court less time to prepare their lies. It didn’t make the waiting any easier. "They had nothing to be jealous of. Jaehyun had his talents, and the others have theirs."

"The better ones, perhaps. The families of Witchcraft and Sleep are no strangers to might. But what of the lesser houses, the pitifully ordinary masses? Surely you won’t pretend to know all their minds?" 

It _was_ what Youngho had suspected, at first, except the sheet and the sceptre had been too obvious. There was no use putting the sky god on the defensive when he could order Youngho’s head on a platter next week. "I won’t."

"So you admit they could’ve killed him?"

"I didn't say that, either."

"Or were you lusting after the god of spring all along?" the king said. Though his face was baby-smooth, his eyes were ancient, full of contempt. "Orchestrating his kidnapping then discarding him when you grew bored?"

Youngho forced out a laugh. "Respectfully, making things up is rather gauche, Your Highness."

Mouth a sullen moue, the sky god shut the scroll and trotted down the stairs, slamming the door behind him. He was partial to theatrics. 

Youngho laid back on the bedroll. After Jaehyun broke the curse, his dreams blurred—nightmarish chases, demons in his palace, devoid of laughter or peach-scented kisses. The king was half-right about one thing: Youngho _did_ want Jaehyun, in more ways than one. Miraculously, the feeling was mutual.

If they both survived this, he could do something about it.

The sun rose, catching on the gilded cage. It was made of the same magic as the net, Jisung had called from below. He and Sorn crafted the alloy a year ago. Upon realizing that someone had stolen their recipe, perversed it, they were thanked for their invention with prison. That someone being the god of wine, darling prince of the sky.

A sunbeam struck Youngho’s eye. Donghyuck. _Don’t you dare give up,_ he seemed to berate.

The tower, carved into Hallasan, stayed ghostly silent. Snow drifted from the window. The wine god must have shuttled Sorn and Jisung to another place after their ruckus, or plied them with vows of forgetting. Youngho was too removed from the Mountain to know. He could only guess where alliances, shifting like quicksand, stood.

*

At the stroke of noon, the guards arrived. It was a different trio each time, all clad in sky blue, all looking like they’d lost a bet. One held open the door. The second unlocked the chains around Youngho's neck, wrists, and ankles. The third inspected his cage, ensuring he wasn’t digging his way out with a spoon. 

They marched him down the tower, floor after floor of quiet. Outside, the path to the main castle wound through a lumpy gray silt of gravel and ice. Youngho was an old enough god that his feet suffered only minor discomfort, but young enough that the sharp rocks prickled. Someone was trying for confession by attrition. They would have to keep trying.

The trial took place in the central hall, scooped with vaulted ceilings. Stained glass bedecked the upper levels in scenes of battles and anointments. The guards locked him on a dias at the base of three stone tiers, where, at the lowest level, the pantheon presided, sparse in their ranks. Scribes sat on the middle tier. At the top, a quintet of arbiters loomed, veiled in iridescent cloth.

"Shall we begin?" asked the goddess of marriage. 

A vague murmur rippled out. The crowd that packed the galleries on the first day had thinned. Doyoung’s court was conspicuously absent, as was Sorn’s. Somin was away, tangled in mortal business, from an official statement. Youngho hoped she had reunited with Jiwoo.

The queen led them through the oaths, plodding dirges about truth and honor. The wine god lounged more rumpled than usual, but his mouth held a smug tilt. Dejun was present, sitting below Mark and Kunhang on the scribes’ tier. They briefly met Youngho’s eyes.

"Today, on the twenty-seventh of twelvemonth," the high king began in dulcet tones. "I present evidence that a naiad, chief advisor to the late god of spring, had deliberately led him to the defendant's infernal plots." 

Youngho dug his nails in his palm and counted to twenty. 

The doors opened. A pair of gods, winter-defying flowers braided in their russet hair, treaded the long aisle to the dais.

"You could not produce the nymph himself?" Minji, the sea queen, asked skeptically.

The high king glowered. As usual, she’d picked a sore spot with ease. "No. These secondary sources will provide the needed depth. Identify them for us, harvest lord."

To his bewilderment, Jaehyun’s father didn’t smolder with hatred today. He looked sallow, drooped as a wilted plant. "They are my children. My two eldest."

"The god of spring’s h - _siblings_ , correct?"

"Yes.

"Those sworn to defend the prior gift of spring?"

A half-second pause, or a figment of Youngho's imagination. "Correct."

"Then be seated." The high king summoned chairs from the gallery. The half-siblings edged as far from Youngho as possible.

"Are we certain to trust them?" Dejun spoke up. "Could their oaths not be sealed in Stygian water?"

"You assume we have endless stores, with all your demands as of late," the king snapped. "The prisoner has sealed up the underworld. Must we waste—"

"If not use them now, when?" interrupted the high queen. She turned her flat gaze to her husband. "A small spoonful should suffice an hour, yes?" She motioned to Kunhang behind her; he sped down the stairs.

The assembly waited. Youngho picked at his chains, their enchantment washing him in stale silence. He felt naked without his magic, adrift from everything safe and familiar. _Jaehyun_ , _I can relate._

When Kunhang returned, the harvest siblings drank, trembling.

The king was the color of puce. "To start, this naiad named Taeyong, who served in the harvest court for nearly thirty years, received treasures from this—" He jabbed a finger down in Youngho’s direction. "—god of death. Please elaborate."

"I-it was shortly after Your Divine Highness defeated Injo in the mortal realm," began one of the godlings, reverent. "One evening, we were eating out in the front garden. We heard a noise, so we peeked over and saw the god of death darken our door. We were about to drive him out—but the nymph approached him."

"It looked like he had been waiting for him," the other added. "Obviously without Father's permission."

"We heard this one speak. We were too far to hear, but the god of death gave him a pouch of pearls, clear as day."

"It was rightfully his," Youngho spoke up. He was weary and numb and sick of slogging through the mud. "A princess died and left behind her jewelry. I recognized Taeyong’s magic on the lustre."

"An archer of love could confirm it," the goddess of wisdom mulled. "If the pearls can be found."

"Nacre stores signatures well," the sea goddess said. "Lifting the wards for this nymph—" 

"Colleagues, you forget that Taeyong has handled the treasure for decades now," said the god of wine. "He would have written over all evidence of bribery."

"It was _not_ —"

"My dear son is right," said the king, back to genial paternalism. He patted his wife’s hand, which twitched like a fish. "Assume as you wish, for there is more to the story."

The harvest godlings piled on watered-down truths and jumped-up insinuations. From a flour sack they produced a cow skull, dodging the Styx by announcing _t_ _he Lees buried someone that morning_ and _half the livestock died the week after_ , disparate facts held together by a slapdash glue. Once going, they distracted and deflected with ease. Children of the court, in their element.

As they described an ominous flock of vultures, a herald stumbled through the doors.

"Your Highness, they refused to wait outside—"

Chenle swept in, flanked by Renjun and Donghyuck. In the flood of daylight their faces were gaunt, fierce. Fat flakes of snow melted on their cloaks.

"Hero of the Yangtze," the high king spluttered. "I said you could have an audience perhaps tomorrow, not today." 

"You said _perhaps tomorrow_ four days ago," Chenle said. He shoved past the dithering guards and stood beside Youngho on his stone bench.

"My hero has been waiting outside your gates for _four days,_ " the sea goddess said. "Care to explain?"

"There are many witnesses in _such_ an important trial," the wine god said, voice placating but back no longer slouching. "In a gradual buildup as this, we—we must proceed in an organized manner."

"I have seen actors in a play, nothing more."

"And rowdy allies of the moon are better?" the king jeered.

"Yes. Not that it would take much."

"Like your siege guns at Viborg?"

"Oh? This is about the war?"

"All this trouble for Jaehyun’s sake," a harvest godling muttered to his sibling. "I told Father to let the underworld keep the bastard and let things lie, but he didn’t listen."

"Trash belongs to trash."

"Eat shit," Donghyuck said sweetly, boots clicking behind them. "You remember what that tastes like, right?"

"You dare—"

Donghyuck caught the fist with ease. Before he could take his own swing, Renjun yanked him back by his hood.

Youngho watched them, a mixture of bewilderment and relief. He and Jaehyun had brainstormed plans in their last dream, but the sky court’s gates were guarded tighter than he’d imagined, if Chenle couldn’t escape notice. Unless Jaehyun had been captured. Unless these three operated independently. "You shouldn’t be here."

Donghyuck whirled on him. "Youngho, just say the word and we’ll—"

Chenle clapped his hands together. The harvest siblings, eager for a whiff of real conspiracy, shrank back, disappointed. "Scour the perimeter, you two," he boomed. The arguments overhead paused. "We do not know _who might be out there._ "

"Yes, princely prince," Donghyuck whispered, sotto voce.

Renjun rolled his eyes. "Come on."

The gods of the sun and dawn split and climbed the stairs bracketing the hall.

"What do you mean, hero?" the king demanded, latched onto the implication. "Is that infernal god of prophecy spying against me?"

"I can’t confirm or deny such a thing," Chenle replied, hands earnestly clasped in front of him. "Because I don’t know. Generally, I was saying there are more monsters out there, as of late."

"Of—of course." The king shifted in his seat. "Pray tell, what compels you here today?"

Above, Renjun seated himself below an enormous stained glass rose. Donghyuck paced the landing, uncowed by the arbiters' presence. Neither sky god nor sea goddess knew them well enough to tell that they had mischief spilling out of their ears.

*

"Psst."

Youngho stilled mid-bite.

"Are you there? John, hello..."

He set down his bowl and went to the open window: Mark perched on the scant overhang before the golden bars.

"Get away from those," Youngho hissed. "How are you not—"

"Being eaten and drained like a thick cut of bacon?" Mark lifted his lacquered party mask, cravat flapping in the wind.

"Not exactly that. But yes."

Before he could voice a warning, Mark curled a gloved hand around a bar. It came back wisping smoke. "Sorn found a counterbalance to her masterwork."

Youngho exhaled. "She’s safe, then? With Jisung?"

Mark nodded. "Sooyoung broke them out around the same time the monsters stopped. They haven’t come back, at least. We thought that you did something. Got free of the chains somehow."

"No. That was Jaehyun," Youngho said, lifting his chin where the chains wound around his throat. "Some talking trees crowned him in the underworld."

"Um, Renjun told me he was alive but... _what._ "

"Don’t look at me."

"Right," Mark said faintly. He stood, craning to see over the tower’s roof. The crystalline wings on his oxfords fluttered, retaining his balance. "Either way, my uncle’s taking credit for it. Enough of an excuse to celebrate, I guess. I’m thankful for the chaos."

Youngho smirked, just to see him squirm. "Is that the reason you’re dressed as an imp in post-Renaissance fashion?" 

"Argh. It was what they suggested. And by suggested I mean ordered." Squatting, Mark scrubbed a hand over his face and lowered his voice further. "I’ve come to give you this." From his pocket, he took out a swatch of fabric, slipping it through the bars. "Keep this on your skin when you sleep, they said. If you think you can hide it."

It was a pair of socks. The threads gleamed as Youngho held it up to the moonlight. "Is this what Chenle broke down five sets of doors for?"

"Partially," said Mark, lingering pride in his voice. Chenle had commanded the court’s attention for hours, hauling river readings and rainforest temperatures. The frost was receding; the southern fires ceased to spread. _Perhaps the new babe of spring has been germinated,_ he’d suggested, master showman, and the audience clapped in delight. "They’re keeping us apart. I pretended to get wasted to escape, even though everyone was mostly distracted with Jinsol and Heesang dueling before the appetizers." He sighed. "So, can you keep it?"

Youngho glanced down. His socks, having endured cycles of snowmelt, raveled at the ends. It would take little to wear another pair beneath. "Easy enough." 

"You can wear them as mitts and bend the bars if you have to."

"And be hunted across the world for the rest of my days? No, thanks."

"If worst comes to worst. We’ll help you escape."

"I didn’t ask."

"Too bad, we’re stuck to you," Mark said, jaw set. "Like it or not, parasites stay."

"Then begone, foul worms, feral flakes." Youngho closed his eyes. "Seriously, though, Mark, you—all of you—don’t owe me a thing." 

"Really? What about saving me from those haunted knights?" Mark asked, sobering. "What about practically raising me when my uncle kicked me off the Mountain? Or when Donghyuck accidentally scorched a temple in his first year? Or—" 

"You don’t owe me anything," Youngho repeated. The gods’ faces, sleek and cruel, floated out of the murk. The sky court remained certain in their victory. "If there’s too much danger, tell them to flee."

"Like they would listen to me." Mark met his glare, unyielding. Decades had passed since a scruffy child, callow and angry, far from becoming the divine messenger, arrived on his doorstep. "You could say we don’t owe you because we’ll do it for free."

Youngho exhaled. Body heavy, he found himself nodding once, and stood back. "Get back before someone realizes you’re missing."

*

The next morning, the high king crouched outside his cell.

A bolt of panic— _he knows_ —fizzled out to groggy relief as the god of the sky opened his mouth: "There you are. I eagerly await your confession today."

Youngho sat up on the bedroll, rubbing his eyes. "Why don’t you summon a chair? That stance doesn’t look too comfortable, Your Highness."

"Should I?" The king arched a brow. "Are you going to keep me waiting long?"

"If you think I’m going to admit to something I didn’t do for your lower back, you’re out of luck."

The king straightened, tipped his head back, and laughed. In his clean breastplate, his lion-headed pauldrons, the yellow-gold diadem glinting on his curls, he looked incapable of the villainous sound. "You’re funny, Youngho. It’s what I’ve always admired about you. It’s such a shame that our triumvirate is unbalanced to the brink of collapse."

Youngho kept his face blank. He’d slept better than he had in ages. His limbs felt lighter. Although he took care not to touch the cage, the metal must have sapped his ichor through the air. Sorn’s socks had worked. "What inbalance? You have the edge over the sea now, but it’s slight."

"Don’t act coy," said the king. Irritation sparked in his eye, gone the next instant. He opened his palms, a plaintive gesture. _Definitely a new tactic._ "You have always been on Minji’s side. I bear some of the blame—I did not welcome you to the triumvirate like I should have. I envied your youth and strength while she received you as a brother in arms."

"You—you think I’m allied with the sea queen?"

"I told you not to act coy," the king said. "I understand, you know. You don’t have to hold back."

"I’m not," Youngho insisted. thoughts spinning. "Sky and Sea fought for centuries before I was born, and I’ve never helped either of you. The dead all come to me."

"'All that lives must die,'" the king mused. "Except the sea prince visits your palace, my scouts have seen. You blessed her hero with an ebon shield."

"Sicheng is my friend. Chenle carries favors from many gods."

"Ah, but those cozy buds of friendship grow into alliances."

"Not always," Youngho said. The king was sharpening into focus. His insecurities, his iron grip on the changing world. _He fears rebellion._ "If us three could drink the Styx, she would say that I've never helped her. And I would swear that I never altered the course of your war. Any war."

"There was an order," the king protested. "One for a thousand to go to Kliszow with your seal—"

"A thousand of _what_? I return hundreds of bones and nutrients into the soil each day."

The king faltered. "It was...a hasty copy." He shook his head, as if to winnow the doubts away. He strained his lips to a thin smile. "Duel me."

Youngho stared.

"You are tired of this as I am," the king said reasonably. "A trial by swords. Let justice decide our fates. If you defeat me, you walk free."

"No," said Youngho. Even if he was better rested, he knew better. The barrel-chested sky god had centuries of experience on him. "A duel between us would solve nothing."

"What? Are all the legends false of your sword arm? Are you not lauded as the strongest amongst the gods living?"

Youngho shrugged. If the king thought he could goad him into accepting, he was mistaken. His arm bore the scar of fighting Sleep and her axes; confidence wasn’t as fragile as pride. He wanted to go home, breathe in the marsh, eat piping hotcakes, and maybe— _maybe_ make love to Jaehyun in his bed, if he wanted it. "It doesn’t matter."

"Then you’re a fool. Naive, disrespectful—" Sneering, the king stomped to the staircase, no longer oozing good cheer. "I'll see you at noon, god of death."

*

A quarter past noon, Jaehyun arrived alone, an apple bough slung across his back.

It began simple enough: the court filed in, louder than usual. The high king called on Dejun to lead the oaths. People squashed the galleries, whispering, eager for the hero to return or a clash between Harvest and Sun.

Neither Chenle nor Renjun nor Donghyuck arrived. 

Instead, the high king launched into a tirade about underworld malfeasance. Disappointment rippled out, yet no one dared to walk away. His pseudo-sermon reverberated off the stone, gaining pitch as sunlight brightened the hall. If he had been younger, Youngho might have cared. Now, he sat with his hands folded and daydreamed about a point below the earth.

Mid-sentence, a herald burst through the doors.

The king growled, "I thought I ordered the guards not to let—"

"It’s—it _is_ —"

Jaehyun entered, a vision in a loose cloak, shirt tucked into his pants, pants tucked into riding boots, hair wavy with damp and frost. He looked travel-worn. Whole. Alive. 

He stepped onto the dais, and Youngho caught his eye. Under his expressionless bearing, Youngho saw his worry mirrored. The moment hung, suspended.

"What spectre has bypassed my wards—this mad ghost, this illusion!" The king scraped back his chair. "I will not suffer such an insult. Guards, unhand this spirit."

From the branch strapped to his back, Jaehyun flung apples to the floor. Black offshoots clawed out, crumbling white fruit, stripping the guards of their spears. "I’m alive," he said, simply. "My father can confirm."

All faces turned to the harvest god, who rose to his feet. The smudges under his eyes had deepened overnight. Gracefully, he extended an arm, and a blade of grass stretched from tier to dais. 

An arm’s reach from Youngho, Jaehyun closed his eyes. Right as the blade reached him, it morphed, tip to root, turning salmon pink, orange, rust. Tiny seed heads foamed up the length. It was the first time Youngho had seen his magic up close. It was dazzling.

"This is my son," the harvest god affirmed.

Divested of their initial astonishment, the audience erupted into murmurs. Dejun was trying to hide his smile in his sleeve. The sea goddess, in a rare look, clutched her necklace, goggle-eyed.

"This trial is a sham," Jaehyun said, still locked in a stare with his father. His voice was deep and calm. "My lord, you have been led to believe that the underworld was responsible for my kidnapping then murder. Someone manipulated you to their side." 

"I agree," said the harvest god. He broke the stare to coolly regard the sky god at the center. Jaehyun had his cheekbones, Youngho realized. Their eyes were alike only in their dryness; there would be no tearful embraces.

The blade of grass vaporized.

"Dujin," the sky god spat. "You would not believe such slander."

"But I would," the harvest god countered. "How could I not, when the evidence is right in front of me? Jaehyun, tell them what you told me."

The king leaned forward. "You two conpsired in _my_ court? I knew that blasted hero was a smokescreen."

"I would hardly equate speaking with my son with conspiracy, Your Highness," the harvest god said stiffly. "Unless that is how we should view you and _your_ son."

The high queen cut the king's protest off with a hand, bracelets clanking. "Let him speak, for fuck’s sake." She turned her stony gaze down. "Jaehyun?"

Jaehyun shouldered off his bag and rummaged inside, a few leaves falling from the bough. In his hand, he produced a pomegranate.

A hush descended like a pall. 

"The groves belonged to a goddess of spring. Her history has been purged, known only to a select few. Her magic took to my blood," Jaehyun hefted the rind with an almost rueful look, "and would not let go until I responded to it."

"And did you?" the sea goddess asked.

"I have, Your Highness," Jaehyun said. "And I have learned that every tree she planted has its own unique magic."

"Marks of identity," said the goddess of wisdom. "We have seen it in every creature."

Jaehyun nodded. "This pomegranate is from the tree that last year’s ambrosia was made with. With a spell, it reacts to others from the same tree." He held up the fruit, sleeves falling back to his elbows. Youngho remembered the ink there, bands laying claim. "The one whose seeds I was fed."

Comprehension dawned on their faces. Behind him, the murmurs raised to a tremolo, musical in their discontent.

"What are you waiting for," said the sea goddess. "Open your pantry for inspection, Sky." 

"As if," the king fumed. "This is some maneuvering to free a criminal—"

"What’s wrong? Do you have something to hide?" the high queen retorted, massaging the bridge of her nose. "Gods, I should have seen it, I should have..."

Beside Youngho, Jaehyun bent to whisper, "The court of love sends their regards."

He smiled. "That's good to hear."

From the dreams he’d known that Jaehyun was alive, but to see him in the flesh, feel his cool fingers wrap around his palm, soaked him in relief.

The conversations echoed down the hall. The harvest god alone was watching Youngho and Jaehyun, their joined hands, an inscrutable frown marring his face. The second tier was a flurry of ink brushes and paper.

As if struck with memory, the high king whipped to his son. "Heesang, what went wrong?"

The god of wine, prince of the sky, went rigid. He stammered, "I was sure they felled him on the cliffs. I-I saw the body."

"How many times must I tell you, _seeing_ is not _believing_ in our world, how could you not clean up your messes—"

"Are we going to record this casual confession for what it is?" the sea goddess shouted over the din.

The king’s eyes blazed as he rounded on her. "Seaweed scum, I will eviscerate your tsar by the end of the month! Not to mention your empress, and your hierophant."

She stared him down, hand on the pommel of her rapier.

He tracked the movement. "And now you entertain the thought of fighting _me_. Me, the king of the gods!"

The high queen held her head in her hands. "Sit down, husband, _please_ , I swear—"

The air charged with heat. Outside, above Hallasan’s frozen caldera, boiling clouds masked the sun. Purpling, cornered, the king looked down, and raised a hand—

—Jaehyun fell on top of Youngho. The bolt of lightning roared over their heads. 

Screams, a stampede of feet. The sea goddess and the high king danced in a vicious duel. Youngho’s chains tangled in a sprawl of limbs. Another apple had landed, sprouting a shelter of long black branches.

"Jaehyun, are you—"

"I am. And you?"

Youngho’s ribs smarted; the lightning had singed the pillars behind them. "Could be better." 

Jaehyun flashed him a smile, grim and quick, one Youngho knew well by now—and they ducked again as the windows imploded in a hail of colored glass.

New gods poured in, some bundled in coats, others in emerald and gold uniforms. The harvest court. They sliced into the hordes of sky blue. Mark and his aunt fended off the goddess of war, scrolls scattered, screams about burning transcripts. Kunhang was ushering the arbiters into a glittering portal cut over the frenzy.

"Jaehyun!" Donghyuck swung through the remnants of a window, chipping ice. He dodged his way down the stairs. "Dujin’s getting the damn net!"

"Where?" Jaehyun brushed the back of Youngho's hand. He wore gloves of the gleaming woven threads.

"East pavilion. Four of them, one pole at each corner." Donghyuck cupped his hands to his mouth. "Auntie!" 

The high queen turned. She parried the war goddess's halberd, cursing, and crouched behind Mark. A near-imperceptible nod, and Youngho’s chains fell away.

Sensation slammed into him, starbursts of pain leaving him mute. 

_Skin. Coal. Shell. Leather_. He tried a shallow inhale, noting the smells of blood and apples swirling around him. In a second he was a god again. It was only the force of Jaehyun's shoulder that kept him from toppling.

"I'll take lover boy," Donghyuck's voice hovered somewhere to the left of them. "We're sticking to that part of the plan, right?"

"Yes." Jaehyun shifted Youngho's weight over. He looked determined, and a little sad. A mop of ashen hair fell over the crease on his forehead. Youngho wanted to smooth it away with his thumb. "That way, no one will have to pay when the dust clears." He smiled—oddly, his left earring was missing—then leapt into the chaos.

*

Youngho jolted awake. In the sanctity of a carriage, the wintry day glided past. Hallasan basked in raw sunlight beyond the thunderclouds.

"Where are we going—I can fight," Youngho muttered. His mouth gummed together, tongue a leaden mass. His sword, the one with the bone-handle, laid across his lap.

"Doyoung spouted stuff about equilibrium and phosphates I didn't really listen to. Basically, you're a liability in a fight, Your Highness," Donghyuck said, reclining on the seat opposite. "And before you get mad, it was all Jaehyun's idea. Mine was to annoy everyone to death until they let you go."

Resisting the urge to close his eyes, Youngho snorted. Fear threatened to submerge him. Jaehyun had done what needed to be done; he'd whipped up a storm that he would douse on his own terms. It was admirable, foolhardy, and made Youngho want to wrestle these reins to turn back to him. "Was the fanfare yesterday his idea, too?"

"Partially. He wanted to smuggle a message to his father before destabilizing our lovely king." Donghyuck crossed his ankles. "Chenle volunteered. It worked out, because the sea queen had his back." 

Youngho dug through the haze, estimating the numbers. "You primed the stained glass when you were up there. For the reinforcements."

Donghyuck beamed. "When there's no opening, you create one. You were the one that taught me that." He rustled about the space, opening a tin of gingerbread. "Hungry?"

Youngho shook his head.

Donghyuck took a cookie for himself. "I didn't think so." 

Outside, the mountains broke away to a shock of gray sea. Youngho couldn't remember the last time he'd been up on a celestial vehicle. It was simultaneously beautiful and dizzying, or that was his ichor scrambling from stagnation. With the small square of light separating the world inside from the out, he could imagine he was back in his cell. Someone thrown in with him. _The others are more than capable;_ he _is more than capable._

Blearily, he said, "Why can't we just be all-knowing and all-powerful?"

Donghyuck burst out laughing.

It must have strained him, guiding the sun on one hand and sorting out this mess in the other, but he nibbled his cookie and hummed without a care. When Youngho asked where they were going, he said, "Hang on tight."

*

Breathing underwater was easy if he didn't think too hard. Which meant it felt like drowning whenever he sank beneath the waves, toes finding purchase on cold sand, and forced himself to take a breath.

"You've been here before, though," Sicheng said, puzzling at Youngho coughing on the kitchen floor.

"Mortal habits," Youngho managed.

After zigzagging across the sky, ensuring they weren't followed, Donghyuck landed at the edge of the arctic, where the sea prince waited in pristine cotton robes and sandals. Donghyuck nearly knocked him over with a hug.

Sicheng's manor, a merciful bubble of air, was sculpted into the continental shelf. Chandeliers of sea glass in every hue; floor mosaics of sharks and loons. Youngho's room, the only one with a fireplace, capped the end of a twisting hallway.

On the first night, over a meal of grilled cod, Youngho must have looked dumbfounded, for Sicheng had said, "Jaehyun asked for a favor. I agreed."

"Did the sea queen actually permit me to stay here?"

"No." Sicheng smiled. "Which makes this the last place any of them would look."

Youngho stared down at the table. The last frenzied moments of the trial echoed in his ears. "I can be gone at any minute. Any time you ask."

Sicheng had tilted his head. "Duly noted. But why would I do that?"

Often Yuta would splash up the porthole, dried berries in tow. Once, they coaxed Jeno and Yeeun out of the ocean depths, and the two destroyed the rest of them at yutnori. Nymphs and north wind were at home in the ice floes; the narwhals rolled over like puppies for them while giving Youngho the evil eye. _They distrust you,_ Sicheng said. It reminded Youngho, with a slight pang, of the pythons.

News dripped in. Sea deities swapped gossip from every shore. There were crimes coming to light, gods escaping, fallen from grace. No deaths. Mentions of the mysterious and charming god of spring, whom they pressed Sicheng for information about. Youngho, sequestered in the back hall when the guests were over, pretended his heart didn't lurch at his name.

Youngho swam up and repaired roof tiles by hand. Between bouts in the water, he collected cowrie shells for wards and scaled fish. He slept heavily and did not dream, partly from weariness, partly from not being surrounded by god-eating metal anymore. Time slid like honey.

*

"Is this what Ithaca felt like?" Youngho lamented on the seventh day. "Waiting, and waiting."

"Such dramatics," Yuta said, propped against the opposite end of the settee. He wiggled his toes at Youngho.

Youngho ignored the request for a massage; Yuta's feet were ice-cold. "Our pantheon's entire history is full of dramatics."

"Fair. But stop moping, it's bad for the fish." 

"I hope it won't take ten years," Sicheng said. Youngho couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

On the eighth dawn, the Mountain declared _King Youngho, Fifth God of Death_ free of all charges. A messenger slid the notice through the mail slot. Youngho, drowsing and slightly hungover on the settee, roused at the sound. 

An hour later, Jeno arrived with a note from Doyoung. _It's true. They're not total dumbasses. More judgments to come. It's been hell without you—pun not intended._ And, in a hasty scrawl, _Do you need a way home?_ It was signed with his blood. Mildly disgusting, under normal circumstances. Today Youngho felt his friend's spellwork in the looped lines and was comforted.

Sicheng sent him off three coats and an enchanted dish towel that Youngho promised to return. 

"Please return with yourself," Sicheng countered. He looked like he wanted to ask something nosy, but refrained. 

Youngho clapped the prince's epauletted shoulder. A _thank you,_ then he plunged feet-first into the sea. Water filled his chest. He breathed it to the surface.

The polar twilight, in its isolated darkness, resembled the underworld. Hunched rocks in the shape of animals. Slashes of brilliant blue ice. He knew the closest branch of the Styx by heart: half an hour with a fast horse, on land, fifteen minutes by sled, if the waterways were frozen solid. Over an hour if he walked. 

Youngho walked.

He could have borrowed a mirror and signaled to Taeil, or waited to reply to Doyoung. But there was an itch in his limbs, a need to scrape the hard earth with his own worn shoes and have his breath puff out in front of him in clouds. He had seen death in every facet. He had considered the possibility of his own. He had lived through two or three mortal lifespans, and it was still not enough.

He missed his home, his hearth. His hall, filled with laughter.

He missed—Jaehyun. 

Over the lull of the past days, the old doubts crept in. They had kissed in dreams but not reality. Except for that once, on the eve of winter, that gentle seal of lips as a last ditch effort to cure the curse that wasn't actually a curse and Youngho thought about more often than necessary. The world opened wide at Jaehyun's feet. Surely, with a thousand choices, wouldn't it be better for him to forget? There were river lords and meadow goddesses that could grow him almond trees or play him songs on the harp or carpet his floors with fragrant flowers. Someone could make Jaehyun smile. Or no one at all. It was a scab he kept picking.

Youngho wasn't yet under the earth, but sensed a presence past the inlet of a fjord. He let them trail for another mile, footsteps unsure yet persistent, figuring a curious naiad in his wake. Further south, the moss appeared in patches on the rocks. Reindeer, stubborn survivors, hoofed the snow. The person didn't leave.

He looked back.

"Youngho," said Jaehyun, stepping out of the gloom.

Youngho couldn't help the instinctive smile tugging his mouth. "Jaehyun. You could have spoken up."

Jaehyun returned the smile, albeit tentatively. "You looked like you wanted to be alone." He looked well, dark eyes striking against the plains of white. The apple bough was gone; a rapier laid against his thigh.

"Not particularly." Youngho took a step closer. Jaehyun's lips were chapped from the wind. "You're younger than me. Aren't you cold?"

"Not _that_ much younger." Jaehyun drew a vial from the depths of his cloak, bell-shaped flower emerging from its neck. "Plus, I have my magic now—why do you look so surprised?"

"I don't know," Youngho said, trying to keep his voice free of sticky emotion. "I didn't expect you to find me, that's all."

Jaehyun frowned. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know."

Jaehyun's eyes warmed, and Youngho privately thought the poets and the playwrights had hit the truth after all, with their sonnets and worship. "Looks like the cold has addled you, not me."

Youngho rolled his eyes fondly. Jaehyun stepped to him, and they angled south once more. Their friendship slipped easily between them. If Jaehyun wanted to walk away after this, at least something would remain.

He filled Youngho in on the details at the sky court, the high king raging, the goddess of marriage seeking a divorce, raising cries of sacrilege; their son, the god of wine, attempting to stowaway on Taeil's moon chariot. All thirteen Mountain gods were gridlocked in rapid-fire debate. Sorn dismantled the golden net for custom-made scabbards, by popular demand. Kun accompanied the archers from the underworld to the witness stand, returning them to the mortal realm after a drink from the Lethe. 

"You're less mad than I am," Jaehyun said, dipping his chin in his scarf. He didn't ask why Youngho was walking the tundra in the middle of winter.

"Obviously, I'm furious at what he did to you and the others. I would be even more so if he gets away with it," Youngho said, kicking a loose stone. "But I'm not the grudge holding type."

"No, I guess not." Jaehyun sighed. "If you were, know I would help you plot your revenge."

An ache radiated up his chest. Youngho tried not to give in to it. "I'm honored." He snuck glances at the god of spring by his side, trying to picture all those years he'd seen him from afar and thought nothing. He hadn't dared to. He tried to picture that distance again, restored.

In the straggly beginning of woodland, Jaehyun touched his elbow, peering up at him. "You can kiss me, you know."

Youngho stopped. He didn't trust himself to navigate the roots without tripping. "You—do you _want_ me to?"

Jaehyun laughed, bright and open, as if he hadn't sent Youngho's pulse hammering. "What were we doing in those dreams? Playing cards?" He closed the distance between them, searching Youngho's face. "Did you...think they weren't real?"

"No," Youngho mumbled. The undercurrent of peaches was dizzying. "No. I only—" It was stupid, saying it aloud. But wasn't that what love was, baring yourself open? Two lifetimes, and he barely had enough wisdom to fill a teacup. "I wanted to give you an easy way out. If you wanted one."

His lips parted. Youngho wanted badly to do as he asked and kiss him. "A way out from what?" 

"From me. From the underworld." Youngho took his hand in his. "Now that you're free, you can change your mind. You can forget that this ever happened."

Jaehyun didn't let go. If anything, he pressed closer, burying his nose in Youngho's collar. "The same goes to you, you know. But I don't want to change my mind—and I really don't want to forget." 

"You want me."

"I do." A smile spread against his skin. "And I thought you wanted me, too."

Slowly, Youngho brought his arms up and hugged Jaehyun back. _You should take every crumb the world gives you._ The tide of happiness engulfed him, a low joy borne deep from the affirmation. He pushed at Jaehyun's shoulders—his eyes shone clear—and leaned down and kissed him.

The spelled dreams had been sharp, as dreams went, but hazy compared to reality. Snow crunched as he stepped closer. The wool of Jaehyun's coat that was actually his own was rough under his fingers. Youngho grazed his lower lip with his teeth, thumbing his cheek, and Jaehyun made a soft noise, one that would haunt Youngho for days. His hands fisted the front of Youngho's coat. Youngho moved with him, letting instinct take over, deepening the kiss, knees bumping as Jaehyun backed him to a tree.

"We're wearing too many layers," Jaehyun groaned, pulling back. His breath blew out in gusts. His lips and cheeks were pink. He looked perfect.

"We're almost there," Youngho said, kissing his mouth once more. He was keenly aware of the frost in the air, the cold needling his lungs. He smiled. "Unless you have another place in mind?"

Jaehyun caught his wrist. "Youngho, we are _not_ trekking a continent to my father's palace."

They followed the creek to its source, hands twined in Jaehyun's pocket. The grotto echoed with running water beyond. Youngho summoned a boat from the depths, grateful for the magic coursing through him, the silvery path ribboning ahead. They climbed in. 

"You don't need to," Youngho said, at Jaehyun picking up the oars. He touched the surface of the river. The black waves coalesced to propel them forward, lapping at the sides of the hull. Welcoming them back.

Jaehyun blinked. "Why don't I remember this."

"You were asleep." The harvest god yelling at Doyoung. The high king fled from his handiwork. The first night Youngho truly grasped the breadth of ancient magic. "You gave me your hand before you passed out."

"I remember that part." Jaehyun hummed thoughtfully. "You carried me into your boat. With my stature, and my entourage, no one's ever carried me like that before."

"Ever?"

"Ever," Jaehyun finished. He unwound his scarf and undid the top button of his shirt, craning to watch the scenery race around them. The sliver at his throat was pale. 

_I must be gone,_ Youngho thought. Getting worked up over a triangle of bare skin, a suggestion of collarbone. Wondering if the rest of him was just as pretty.

Jaehyun caught him looking, and smiled, dimples craters in his cheeks.


	6. spring

"By my estimates, a quarter of the seeds are unsown," a grain god said. "The farmers are hesitant to borrow too much, after this past winter."

"What of the garlic?"

"The leaves are yellowing, and should be ready to harvest in a week. Half have died."

Jaehyun's father sat straight-backed and cross-legged on the floor, his typical rosewood chair pushed to a corner. "Not as bad as I've thought. Adjust the success rate by a percentage in that radius. You know how to cast the blessing, don't you?"

The god snapped to attention. "Yes, my lord."

"And if you need a refresher, my son will be happy to provide."

The god squeaked, meeting a spot above Jaehyun's forehead instead of his eyes. "Many thanks, both of you." He bowed and slid the screen door open, slippers slapping the floor at the speed he strode away.

Along with the rest of the assembly, Jaehyun sat on a cushion thick enough to fall in. It was one of many reforms the harvest court had adopted, something about dismantling formalities, relaxing the atmosphere. Jaehyun, shifting every few minutes lest his bottom be sucked in, hadn't yet formed a concrete opinion on this one.

"Next is Hyunjin, from the eighth zone," a scribe announced.

The young deity entered with more assurance than the god previous, but her ledger trembled in her hands. Jaehyun tried to smile encouragingly when she glanced over, and she startled before attempting a smile back. Courtiers gave him a wide berth now, replacing the persona they knew with the accounts of his sweeping entrance on the Mountain. Not to mention his supposed slew of allies in the underworld. He supposed a balance of the two was for the best.

The meeting dissolved, keeping to a single hour on the dot. Another change. Rain pattered down the sloped roofs as Jaehyun declined timid invitations to tea and walked the damp paths to the residential courtyard of the new recruits.

At the center, his stepmother's bonsais stood in a mix of enamel and clay pots. "I thought they might be appreciated here," she'd said, unloading them from her wheelbarrow one morning. Jaehyun had agreed, and they made a tentative pact to tend to them together. It was the most words they'd exchanged in a decade.

Raindrops pinged off her wards, their magic flowing as sap inside the bark. A prune to the juniper, a nudge to the Chinese quince; Jaehyun took peace in these parts of the palace. He'd cleared out his room the first day back, after a night in the underworld where the drinks got purpler and purpler and Youngho held him tight and kissed him and kissed him in an alcove.

A shadow drew over him. Without looking up, he knew a silk parasol blotted out the rain.

"Have you been doing well?" the god of the harvest asked. "Spring is well underway, thanks to you."

Jaehyun turned, meeting his father's cheerless gaze. A constant. "I have. And—it's not my effort alone."

"Of course." Stubble peppered his chin. He motioned to the bonsais. "Do you have enough time to tend to these plants? I could tell her to scale it down, surely."

"It's no trouble."

"What of the protectorates? I can change the rotations. The young ones are clamoring to learn from you, but think of the fields first."

"It's really no trouble," Jaehyun enunciated carefully. His father extended apologies in roundabout solicitudes, shame swimming behind every concern. He was a man shorn of his pride: the high king had tricked him into believing that his son was dead, that the underworld was his enemy, and that the only way had been to join him. "I'm happy to show them what I can."

"Are you certain? A word, and your burdens don't have to be yours."

"It's alright. Truly." _Patience._ Jaehyun straightened, took the parasol from his father, and led them under the veranda roof. 

There, his father studied the sluices of rainwater with intensity. "How is Heesang, by the way?"

"Better. He's studying more." The former god of wine received a light sentence: confinement in the castle, save for guarded breaks to assist the burgeoning springtime. Jaehyun's would-be murderer (or employer of would-be murderers—archers had ambushed him once in the underworld and another when he rode up the mountains) groveled at his feet for forgiveness. Jaehyun gave him lists of ground to cover and tomes to read and largely ignored him. "He healed a large garden yesterday. The tulips will survive."

His father tucked his hands neatly in his sleeves. "That trivial a task, hm."

"He's never been powerful. I tried to assign him a barley field, and he ruined it." 

"A shame. To think he would have been a fine addition to our court in the past."

Jaehyun looked sideways at him, trying to keep his expression blank. "You considered him a match?"

"Was he not pleasing to your eye?"

"That's—not even the tip of the problem. He would have been a fine addition to our reputation, but at what cost?"

His father's shoulders bunched, then fell. They'd shouted and cursed the days after his return, snapping the tautness that had stretched for years. By the end they were talking again, trying for compromise, though Jaehyun felt his quiet disapproval whenever Youngho or any of the underworld was brought up in conversation.

Jaehyun handed him back the parasol. As he fastened his cloak, leftover shock fizzling away, his father drew himself up again and said, "We have stew on the stove. The one with the beets. It...should be done by lunchtime."

Jaehyun paused. "I'm sorry. Not today, my lord."

A twitch on his brow. Jaehyun sensed a sigh in his chest—at the rejection, or at the formality wedged between them, he didn't know. The harvest god drew back, resigned. "Be safe, Jaehyun."

At the palace gates, Jaehyun summoned his horse and pulled into a gallop. It had taken half a year away for him to realize how stifling the court had been. One day, he might accept the invitation to stay for a while longer, eat rye bread and drink tisanes under the bougainvillea.

Today, he had a warm house waiting for him, maybe someone dozing in his bed. He rode out into the rain.

*

On his front stoop, the second step creaked. 

Jaehyun skipped over it, shin brushing a potted cypress. The greenery nearly masked the walls: clematis twining up the sides of the porch, limes tumbling at the second story window, butter lettuce marching along the trim like piped icing. For a fortnight he spelled maples and oaks together to make the frame, a larch staircase linking the floors. Stones he drew from the earth for the hearth and fixtures, sand grit for windows, bamboo for pipes. It was a gardener's mirage, an impossible cottage in a remote forest. Jaehyun was proud of it.

In his room, the curtains were shut. Dark hair peeked out from the blanket.

"You're back," Youngho murmured sleepily.

"So are you." Heart full, Jaehyun padded to the side of the bed. "I wouldn't have been surprised if they kept you for hours longer."

"Thankfully not. Doyoung made sure of it." Youngho drew back the blanket, smiling up at Jaehyun. "How was your meeting?"

"Nothing new. I'm meeting a few acolytes to inspect some orchards in the evening."

Youngho reached for his waist. "So that means we have hours ahead of us." 

"Hang on." Laughing under his breath, Jaehyun crossed the room to hook his cloak beside Youngho's, a heavy ceremonial robe of velvet. He eyed the scythe and the knucklebone necklaces on the table. "You didn't have to scare them like that."

"I'm technically not part of the Mountain," Youngho said, yawning. "And after being a prisoner for weeks, I have to keep up appearances."

"You're the king of death. You can wear a suit of tartan and people will still bow to you." 

"Somehow, I doubt that." 

Youngho lifted a corner of the blanket, and Jaehyun nestled in. They faced each other, pillow to pillow. Youngho rubbed small circles on his back. Despite months of being lovers, the simple touches undid Jaehyun. A palm skimming his shoulder as they fixed dinner. Ankles hooked as they debated sulfur ratios. He'd never been a tactile person, usually keeping courtiers from spending the night, but these days had him leaning into Youngho's touch.

"Did you know my father wanted to match me with Heesang back then?" Jaehyun said.

"Seriously? Is it that holy blood of the Mountain theme again?" 

"Those family trees," Jaehyun affirmed. "Who else better than the firstborn of the king himself."

"Should I be jealous?" Youngho teased.

"Unless you're planning to burn my house, take up with the high queen, or shackle me to your basement, then no."

"I like your house," Youngho protested. Compared to the wild growth outside, the interior held succulents or ferns here or there, bare timber dotted with his friends' knicknacks. "It always smells nice."

"Comforting that you didn't address the last two."

Youngho pinched his side, smirking, Jaehyun pouting. "I thought you knew me better than that."

They settled in the dim stillness, wrapped in the blanket. Ice creaked and thumped in the river behind the house. March—the season of thaws, thunder, awakenings. 

"They're considering having trials for the vacant thrones, like in the underworld," Youngho said. "Instead of hereditary claims."

"And how did the queen take it?"

"Unexpectedly well. There are talks of her resigning herself. Obviously, the high king's sister is protesting. It may end up being one throne contested, the other chosen."

On the second week of deliberation, the arbiters had given Mark a scroll. The gods of sky and wine were to be stripped of their titles; the high king would be locked in the same tower he'd imprisoned Youngho in, waiting for a separate decision on Tartarus, while his son would be confined to house arrest. In the ensuing noise, Jaehyun remembered the arbiters unmoving on the top tier, faces hidden behind their shimmering veils, and shivered. Some said they were children of the Fates. Others thought they were the Fates themselves plus two animated corpses.

"Any clear favorites?"

Youngho hummed. "There are some promising candidates for the court of wine. One trained in the hunt—my new grim reaper grew up with him."

"The one who got shoved off the Mountain."

"That's the one." Youngho considered his expression. "He's fine, now. Far away from the sky court, as he wanted."

"I'm glad, then." Jaehyun rested his chin on Youngho's chest. "Do you know what he likes to eat? I could invite him over. Or several of them. Cook them something."

"I can ask. They'll probably be delighted at securing a coveted spot at your dinner table, anyways."

Jaehyun snorted a laugh. "It's nothing worth wishing for." 

"No one's wanting to stick someone else with a butter knife. And there's always dessert. That's a winning formula."

"I thought it was your impeccable taste in rosés."

Youngho grinned, crinkling his eyes. "That goes without saying." He stretched his arms, joints popping. "I'll see about setting a day. I'll help, of course."

Although Youngho ribbed and joked with the younger gods as usual, Jaehyun saw the gratitude he bore at their backs, when Mark arrived with a letter, when Yangyang accepted a new quiver strap. The rescue had lodged something in him. Maybe they could thank them together.

Thunder pealed in the distance, sky gleaming between the curtains. Jaehyun cupped Youngho's warm cheek and let himself be pulled up. Their lips slid together, languid and sure. Youngho sat up against the headboard, and Jaehyun straddled his lap, licking sweetly into his mouth.

Youngho pushed at Jaehyun's fraying sweater, baring a shoulder to the chill air. The marks from yesterday were amber, nearly faded. "They've healed."

"Guess you have no choice but to renew them," Jaehyun said cheekily, breath hitching as Youngho did just that—mouth hot on his skin, sucking fresh bruises.

Youngho glanced up and tapped his lobe. "You're wearing the new earrings. They look nice on you."

Jaehyun ducked his head, preening in the private space of the two of them. The studs were yellow-gold. They gave him a small twisted measure of triumph, the once terrible metal serving no other purpose except to shine, inert.

A hard kiss; Jaehyun pitched forward. He nipped a mark of his own on the underside of Youngho's jawbone, relishing the hand tightening on his waist.

He leaned back. Youngho brushed a lock of Jaehyun's hair from his forehead (the lilac never came back, not that Jaehyun willed it to) and smoothed a hand down his side, teeth scraping a spot on his neck that had him keening. They rolled atop the bed. It was a heady concept, being taken apart by the same person in countless different ways, taking him apart in turns.

*

"Smells like pasta."

"It's probably the basil," Jaehyun said, kicking the sink to clear the chopping board. "Do you want a cutting?"

Doyoung gave a wry laugh. "Thanks, but no thanks. My rosemary's barely alive in my drafty hall." At the table, he pulled out a chair for Taeyong, who groused, "I have two working hands, last I checked."

It was a testament to recent events that Doyoung didn't bicker back. He watched Taeyong take a seat, face pinched in concern. A poultice wadded to the side of Taeyong's scalp. 

"Looks like you've been hard at work," Doyoung noted, peering through Jaehyun's kitchen. He blinked at the pot of honey beside the stove. "Are you keeping _bees_?"

"In the back. It's only one hive for the moment, though."

"Wow. You're living the faerie forest dream, aren't you?"

Jaehyun laughed. "It's getting there."

Doyoung turned, squeezing Taeyong's fingers where they splayed on the armrest. "Remember that cake you made? The one with the yogurt?"

Taeyong smiled faintly, a solid weariness draped over him like a quilt. "You probably remember it better than I do."

"It was back in the harvest palace," Doyoung said, looking up at Jaehyun for confirmation. He nodded. "You had us crush almonds for hours while we were drunk. But it was worth it. The three of us demolished it."

"Oh, _that_. I hope we have enough sense to enchant a mortar and pestle now." He flicked Doyoung's nose. "Or the brawn to do it."

Doyoung groaned. "Unlike some people," he eyed Jaehyun leaning innocently on the counter. "We can't all be muscle pigs eager to spar in rain and snow like our godly athletic ideals."

"I'm joking," soothed Taeyong. And, in a soft voice, " _I_ like your muscles."

Ignoring Doyoung's splutters, Jaehyun calmly walked to the oven and checked on the roasting chicken. 

A week ago, Doyoung and Taeyong had been clearing debris on the manor grounds, branches and rocks tossed by the winter storms. Midway through shoveling rubble—Jaehyun pretended not to notice the blushes creeping up their necks when they recounted this part; either they hadn't been actually clearing debris or were keeping a secret or two—a balmy wind flared up, too sudden to be anything but divine. 

It hurtled a brick into Taeyong's temple. 

The sheer force of Doyoung's healing staved the worst of it; Taeyong's ichor mopped up the rest. Youngho and Jaehyun rushed over, and, before the night was over, Doyoung had hunted the west wind to a remote cape and dragged him bodily up the Mountain, where the court roused from their beds and the tower gained a new prisoner.

"Do you want help with anything?" Doyoung asked abruptly. Beside him, Taeyong looked a fraction more awake, cheeks rosy.

Jaehyun shook his head. "You two relax." He shuffled his cards for ichor-replenishing recipes and hid his smile; he and Youngho could dissect the recollection later. "Do whatever...you were doing."

The strangeness vanished as they ate, the other gods fascinated at the food. They discussed the latest offerings (fuller), the reports of miracles and witches (cropping up like rabbits) in the countryside. Taeyong, bolstered by the sustenance, marveled at the pot of jasmine on the windowsill. It was a offshoot from Jaehyun's mother, whose shrine was a short ride upstream.

When Jaehyun and Youngho visited for the first time, she patted their cheeks and offered them porridge, unfazed that the king of death was in her home. Only, _I've heard much about you but Jaehyun never mentioned you were this tall_ as they cleared leaves from her gutters then enveloped her tiny frame in hugs.

"Thank you for the meal," Taeyong said at the door, slinging on his coat. The late afternoon sun slanted on the grass. "Spring is coming. You're doing well."

"You are," Doyoung echoed. "And please tell Youngho he's welcome next time he's free." He grimaced. "Actually, don't tell him that. Too much mush."

Jaehyun smiled, warm to his toes. He had fallen through the earth, eaten spelled fruit, and emerged intact—he was here, changed, alive on an ordinary day. "I won't."

His friends picked their way to the clearing. One offering his shoulder to lean on, the other trailing hyacinths in his wake.

*

The full moon shone clear on the winter night. Pines swallowed the path, sparkling under a dusting of snow. 

The earth was silent under Jaehyun's feet. But he reached out and traced the roots through the dirt, listened to their meristems thrum and branches curve. His feet carried him through the shorn fields.

The road was deserted. When Jaehyun squinted down, he could see the tracks of wheels and horseshoes, and when he came upon the farmhouses and villages he saw the glow of candlelight, tinsel and ovens and brandy, poured into saucers for the gods. It was not the winter of monsters shrieking out, thunder rumbling. This cold rounded a cycle.

He turned away.

Someone took his hand—

Jaehyun sat up, sheets pooling around his knees. Beside him, Youngho slumbered on. His slow breaths told Jaehyun he was sleeping, not collecting souls. 

The night they'd returned to the underworld, a crowd whooped on the docks for their king's homecoming. Ten waited to ambush them inside the vestibule, yanking them into the ballroom where Kun was stirring wine over a fire pit and unmanned instruments stirred up a racket that was more noise than melody.

Several sloppy waltzes later, tipsy with drink, lips swollen ("You were practically eating each other," Ten bemoaned, stumbling upon their alcove), Youngho and Jaehyun stole away. After bathing, and answering missives and all that could wait for morning was set aside, they undressed each other and stumbled into bed.

"I did promise Jason I'd be back," Jaehyun had said afterwards, lying dazed on a pillow. "I left him my earring."

Youngho snorted out a laugh, and touched his cheek. "I _was_ wondering if you lost it while traveling. But I don't need a magpie for a guard-snake."

"It was the sentiment." Jaehyun nuzzled into Youngho's palm, remembering his hands on his skin moments before. "There was something here I needed to return to."

They cleaned up, giggling at the slightest word, basking in a sated contentment. Youngho stoked the fire and snuffed out the candles. In the dark, he had asked, "What will you do, now?"

That was the heart of it. Jaehyun would need to return to the harvest court, but he couldn't imagine staying. He wasn't content in sitting passively and waiting for the seasons to return, but didn't know where to begin. They had checked the armory, and Jaehyun's silver crown hadn't crumbled, as he'd guessed. It glinted on its velvet cushion.

"You could rule with me, if you wanted," Youngho said, keeping his arm loose. Comfort without heaviness. "Only—a thought. For the future."

Jaehyun had tried to imagine being a king of the underworld. Being any king at all. Beyond the test run with the poplar and groves, he had little in the way of ruling. He searched himself for fear, and found none. He could learn. It was a distant speck, a possibility of many, and he treasured it with the rest of his branching choices. 

And he had craned his head to kiss Youngho, and said, "I'm going to build a house first."

Tonight, in the same room, Jaehyun slid out of bed and slipped through the doors to the sitting area. Old stars shone. Old pockets of the marsh gurgled. The underworld was awake. Jaehyun didn't know when he'd begun thinking of it as home, as he thought of his house of spring as another. He was not bound to either.

On the end table sat a planter of mint, from Jaehyun's garden, and a half-drained bottle of wine, from their evening of paperwork. At the top of the wardrobe was Youngho's old reaper's hat. 

The night before, walking the canals of a mortal city, Youngho had told him about growing up in Night's domain, the tall black house on the Lethe, the pressures, the final letter before his mother decided to shed her immortality and join the living with her lover. 

"Is she still alive out there?" Jaehyun had asked him. 

"Still," Youngho had said, and pointed to a brightly-lit window above an cafe when they passed.

The doors shifted. Youngho stepped out, hair adorably mussed. A question on his face.

Jaehyun smiled at him. "Just—dreaming of winter."

Youngho stepped closer, winding his arms around him, chest flush against his back. "A nightmare?"

"No," said Jaehyun. "It was...neutral. It might have been a prophecy."

Warmth seeped through the thin linen of his nightshirt. Youngho kissed the top of his head, swaying them gently, to Jaehyun's huff of amusement. "That's far from our specialties."

"I know."

"Are you going to act on it?"

"The next winter," Jaehyun worried his sleeve between his fingers, "Could I stay over for a while? I have a feeling I won't be needed as much."

Youngho turned him in his arms. He said, "Of course. I'm happy anytime you're here, you know."

"Thank you," Jaehyun murmured, muffled in the hollow of his throat. He planted a kiss there.

They stayed for a moment, puddles rippling outside the bay window. Then he tugged Youngho back into the bedroom. The sheets were cool, smelling like both of them.

Youngho found Jaehyun's hand under the blanket. The fire threw ruddy light on his profile, and he turned his head on his pillow, regarding Jaehyun as he sometimes did: as if he couldn't believe he was real, as if he was crowned with love and beauty, beyond spring.

In this light, they slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every kudo and comment is appreciated! thank you for reading this far.
> 
> [tumblr](https://parhelias.tumblr.com/)


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